


Regarding House

by Flywoman



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, First Time, M/M, Mystery, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:42:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flywoman/pseuds/Flywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do the memories make the man? House struggles to redefine himself and his relationships while suffering from severe amnesia. Holiday hiatus fic written after 7X08, set roughly around the projected end of Season 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tabula Rasa

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Allusion (non-explicit) to the death of a recurring character. Also, I am an _enormous spoiler whore_. Some S7 revelations and speculations have found their way into this fic. Read at your own risk.  
>  **Disclaimer:** None of these characters belong to me. Story vaguely inspired by the BtVS episode “Tabula Rasa” and the Bones episode “The Fifth Bullet.” Neurological exam questions are from _Still Alice_ by Lisa Genova, used here without permission. Quotations preceding each chapter come from [Arthur Conan Doyle](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes).  
>  **Thanks:** To [](http://soophelia.livejournal.com/profile)[**soophelia**](http://soophelia.livejournal.com/)   for tantalizing tidbits, my f-list (especially [](http://menolly-au.livejournal.com/profile)[**menolly_au**](http://menolly-au.livejournal.com/) , [](http://cuddyclothes.livejournal.com/profile)[**cuddyclothes**](http://cuddyclothes.livejournal.com/)  , and [](http://readingrat.livejournal.com/profile)[**readingrat**](http://readingrat.livejournal.com/)  ) for tips and encouragement, and most of all to my beta [](http://jezziejay.livejournal.com/profile)[**jezziejay**](http://jezziejay.livejournal.com/)   for gratifying enthusiasm, valuable concrit, and incredible patience throughout the writing process :)

**Chapter 1: Tabula Rasa**   
_  
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.”   
_

 

My first memory is of waking up on the floor. The nubbly carpet pressing uncomfortably into my cheek turned out to be a utilitarian gray. My mouth felt parched and tasted of stale, bitter coffee, my stomach threatened rebellion, and my head pounded periodically with dull pulses of pain. When I rolled reluctantly onto my back, my stiff neck prompted me to groan in protest.

I pulled myself up to a sitting position and took a look around, careful not to turn my head too far. I was on the floor of an office, spacious enough, faux wood paneling on one wall, glass half-hidden behind Venetian blinds for the other three. There was a large glass-topped steel L-shaped desk adorned with a lamp, assorted personal paraphernalia, and a Dell. An ergonomic office chair was tucked behind it, and two hard, curved wooden ones faced it from the front. Low shelves holding ill-organized stacks of books were topped with an interesting collection of antique vessels and instruments. A wheeled steel cart sagged under an old analog television set, contrasting with an expensive-looking lightbox mounted on the wall. An Eames lounge chair lurked in the corner near the door, the lettering on which I was able to read in reverse with a little effort.

Great. So who was Gregory House, M.D., and what was I doing on the floor of his office?

The insistent dig of a squarish object into my right buttock offered an answer to an even more urgent question. I leaned on my left arm to fish a wallet out of my jeans and flipped it open to the driver’s license, which featured a photo of a scruffy-looking middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Shocked, I rubbed the sandpapery skin of my jaw and traced the profile of my nose for confirmation. Apparently _I_ was Gregory House.

I had almost no time to process this revelation before my office door was pushed open and four people in white coats filed in. One, a slim, dark blond, ridiculously good-looking male in his early thirties, said in a blurred but unmistakable Australian accent, “Our patient has stones, and she isn’t responding to the NSAIDs.”

Beside him, an attractive black man stared down at me, unblinking, and an intelligent-looking but absurdly young girl in a too-short skirt, fuzzy tights, and hugely impractical heels stood biting her lower lip. Just as I was starting to wonder whether all of these doctors had been selected primarily for their decorative appearances, a short, balding, unequivocally Jewish man straggled up to peer anxiously around the Australian.

None of them seemed terribly surprised to see me sprawling on the carpet. Ditto the fact that I was dressed in blue jeans, Nike Shox, and – I glanced down – a black Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, none of which were particularly clean. In fact, the rank tang of stale, alcohol-impregnated sweat rising from my clothes was threatening to make me heave.

A rubber-tipped wooden cane with a curved handle was lying on the floor near my hip; I grabbed this and used it to lever myself, wincing, to my feet. My right thigh was unexpectedly unable to support my weight, and when I ran my hand down the denim, I could feel the puckered surface of what must be an ugly scar. I maneuvered myself behind the desk and sat down in the swivel chair, which was comfortable enough and seemed molded to the shape of my very own seat but did not bring back the surge of familiarity for which I’d halfway hoped.

What now? My visitors were all looking at me expectantly, as if waiting for some kind of miraculous epiphany to strike me from above. Okay. They were all wearing photo badges, but I couldn’t read the lettering. They were… at least _mostly_ young, dressed like doctors, and treating me with deference and consulting me about a patient. About whom I knew absolutely nothing. But what could be so mysterious about kidney stones?

To buy time, I waved my hand vaguely. “We’d better reconsider our options. You, uh, Sweet Sixteen,” I said pointedly to the girl, pegging her for an eager beaver, “let’s have a quick recap.”

To my relief, her face lit up, and she unconsciously straightened and lifted her chin. “Twenty-two year old female varsity athlete presented last week with complaints of recent clumsiness and underwent a thorough neurological examination, but was later sent home without a definitive diagnosis when symptoms could not be confirmed. Yesterday evening the patient was readmitted after a track meet with severe unilateral lower abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.”

She looked briefly over at the black man as if for permission, then continued, “Dr. Foreman took charge of the case in your absence. The sudden onset of pain and subsequent hematuria suggested the presence of kidney stones, which were not detectable by X-ray but have since been confirmed by ultrasound and CT.”

I nodded to indicate that I had understood, then wished I hadn’t. “Thoughts?”

“Radiolucent stones suggest a low percentage of calcium, so we’re probably looking at uric acid stones rather than oxaloacetate,” the Australian answered, apparently not embarrassed to state the obvious in order to score points with the boss.

“Serum uric acid levels were normal,” the Jewish man argued.

“How’s the urate to creatinine ratio?”

“Two point one,” the girl volunteered when no one else spoke up. Good memory for numbers, anxious to prove herself, but also aware that she was low on the totem pole.

“And that suggests…?” Puzzled looks all around. I sighed. “What else have you observed?”

The three men exchanged glances. “Well,” the Australian ventured, “she’s irritable. Has a charming habit of throwing the kidney dish at our heads.”

“She’s in _severe pain_. General jerkiness is not a symptom,” the black guy, presumably Foreman, snapped.

“If it were, we would have admitted at least one person in this room a long time ago,” the Jewish man muttered. Heh. He was obviously kind of passive-aggressive.

“Last week her teammate reported that the patient hadn’t been herself lately,” the girl put in suddenly, with the glimmer of understanding in her eyes.

“Excellent. How are her lips?”

“Her… lips?” the Jewish man repeated.

“Ugly. I think she’s been chewing on them,” the girl said, a grin breaking out on her face.

“Lesch-Nyhan, in a twenty-two-year old female?” Foreman asked incredulously. “There was nothing in her family history.”

I shrugged. “Very rare, but it happens. Spontaneous paternal mutation, with mild, late-onset symptoms due to X-inactivation. Confirm with RT-PCR. Treatment?”

“Lithiotripsy for the stones if needed and control of uric acid levels with allopurinol,” Foreman said, shaking his head.

“Too bad there wasn’t a competent neurologist around here who could have caught that earlier,” I mused.

I had no idea why Foreman scowled and the others smirked as they filed out of my office.

Once they were gone, the reality of my strange and frightening situation returned full force. I found myself trembling with the aftereffects of adrenaline, feeling as though I had just passed a momentous examination – not necessarily that of diagnosing the disease, but of not giving the game away to the doctors who were probably my closest colleagues. I also felt more nauseated than ever, and decided that I had better get out into the fresh air before I christened my office carpet. On a hunch, I tried the closed door back near the window and found myself on a balcony.

It was peaceful out there; I took a deep breath, filling my lungs and clearing my aching head a little, and looked down over the hospital grounds, three floors down by my estimate. I just needed a few minutes to myself to think.

An abrupt movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. A dark-haired man, most likely in his early forties, had just walked out onto the next balcony, his shoulders squared as if for a difficult confrontation. He hopped over the low wall between us and stopped in front of me, jamming his hands in the pockets of his pristine white coat. His hair looked damp, as if he’d showered very recently, then hastily combed it into place.

“Hey,” he said, looking at me sidelong, like he was dying to ask how I was doing but was determined not to for some reason. He almost seemed braced for some kind of blistering attack.

“Hey,” I echoed, trying to catch a good look at his photo badge without being too obvious about it. _James E. Wilson_ , I thought it said. Hmm, that was tricky. Clearly we knew each other, probably pretty well. He might go by James, or Jim, or Jimmy, and if I guessed wrong, it could be a dead giveaway.

“You must have a hell of a headache,” he said.

“I’d nod,” I agreed, “but your shoes look better without my spew on them.”

“I didn’t even hear you leave this morning.” He stood staring at me thoughtfully, his posture gradually relaxing from its inexplicable rigidity to mere wariness. “You know, House, after last night, I was thinking…” He hesitated, looking rueful, a bit embarrassed, but there was an air of shy hopefulness that I found charming. “Now that Sam’s gone and… and everything, maybe you’d like to move back in with me.”

Suddenly my head was reeling, and not just from whatever had recently laid me out on my office floor. That was _way_ too much information for a casual conversation on the balcony. So this Dr. Wilson was gay, apparently, and some guy named Sam had just moved out, and something had happened between us last night, and so now he was interested in… getting back together with me? I appraised him with a new perspective, noting his softening but still reasonably trim physique, the full, glossy brown hair, the good-humored lines around his eyes and mouth balanced by the worried crease between his heavy brows. I began to suspect that I had a weakness for brunettes.

Wilson had apparently mistaken my rapid recalculations for reluctance and added quickly, “Of course, I understand if you want to think about it. I… treated you badly, before. I mean, it was Sam’s idea… but no, that’s not fair. It was my decision, and I blew it. I _am_ sorry about that.” He took a step closer, his left arm twitching almost imperceptibly as if to touch me before it fell back into his pocket.

Curiouser and curiouser. Had he been cheating on me with this dude? Still boyishly handsome, sharp dresser, expensive-looking watch and shoes, probably a target for gentlemen and ladies alike. Or maybe there was something even more sinister going on? Although somehow I found that hard to believe of this kind-faced, concerned-looking man. _What the hell._

“Okay,” I told him impulsively.

“Seriously?” There was no mistaking the relief and pleasure in his eyes.

“Yeah. I mean… you’re not the only one who has reason to apologize, right?” I gave him a meaningful look, allowing him to interpret that statement however he saw fit.

He was staring at me with a stunned expression. At first I wondered if I’d just fucked up royally somehow, but then he stammered, “W-wow. Do you know how long I- Um. You know what, never mind, I’m just going to take a moment to savor this historic occasion.” His tone was teasing, but there was a glint in his eye from which I inferred that I wasn’t the sort of guy who generally admitted when he was wrong.

“Very funny,” I said curtly, and got us back on topic. “So when do you think you’d want me to bring my stuff over?” _Where does he live? Do I even have a car?_

“Did you bring the bike today?”

 _I have no fucking idea._ “Yeah,” I bluffed, and rubbed my right thigh, which was in fact beginning to throb, figuring him for the gallant type.

Sure enough, he said quickly, “How about if I give you a ride home later and help you pack? Now that all of Sam’s stuff is out, your old room is just like you left it. You can move back tonight.”

Huh. He was too eager, even for a lonely man who’d just been dumped. I couldn’t help suspecting that there was some reason why he didn’t want me going home, spending the night at my own apartment. But what could it be? And how could I find out without arousing his suspicions? Or maybe…

“Don’t want me spending the evening alone, do you?” I asked, looking at him intently.

Wilson crimsoned. “It’s not that I don’t… trust you,” he said carefully. “And we don’t have to talk about it, but… I thought that you could use the company. And I know I could.”

“I’m fine,” I said, with what I hoped was the right mixture of uncertainty and bravado.

“You do seem to be handling this a lot better than I’d expected,” he admitted. Strangely, this thought seemed to arouse both dismay and suspicion, both quickly damped down.

“Yeah, well, I’d better get back to my case,” I said vaguely. “See you later?”

“Sure. I’ll come by your office around seven.” He started to pivot on his heel, hesitated, then turned back. “And, uh, House?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Once Wilson had disappeared back behind the door opposite, I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. A few minutes ago, I’d thought that my biggest problem would be figuring out who I was and what the hell had precipitated the necessity of doing so. Now I had inadvertently reconciled with a handsome ex-boyfriend and was well on my way to moving in with someone whom, as far as I was concerned, I’d only just met.

Well. This was certainly not going to be boring.

***

I commandeered an empty exam room, locked the door, and started at the top, with a thorough examination of my head. No blood, dried or otherwise, and although the inside of my skull still throbbed, no tender areas indicative of a recent bump or bruise. There was, however, a subtle discontinuity that suggested a healed skull fracture, and beneath the thinning hair, a large red birthmark. None of this provided the plausible explanation that I sought.

Much can be deduced from the hands. Mine were strong, lean, and liver-spotted, with calluses on the left fingertips suggestive of playing a stringed instrument. One finger seemed slightly crooked, as though it had once been broken, but long enough ago now to have healed. My right palm also had a callus, presumably from using the cane, although logically I should have been holding it on the opposite side from my lame leg; I made a mental note to practice using it correctly. When I looked closely at my wrists, I found fine lines, probably the remnants of parallel cuts and had to wonder briefly whether these had been self-inflicted. But most immediately relevant, there were no indications that I had attempted to break my fall this morning, supporting the hypothesis that I had suffered a loss of consciousness before collapsing on the floor.

Next I took off my stinky t-shirt, wondering whether I would be able to stand myself for much longer without a shower. Giving yourself a thorough physical without a full-length mirror is not as easy as you might think. I found myself contorting into all kinds of awkward positions, angling a dental mirror I’d found in a drawer. My upper body alone featured a fine collection of old scars, none recent enough to account for traumatic memory loss; apparently I’d even been shot at fairly close range. This suggested a man who was 1) clumsy or oblivious to his surroundings, 2) a risk-taker, careless of possible personal injury, and/or 3) well-practiced at pissing other people off.

I did not have any reason to believe that I was clumsy or oblivious.

I hesitated before pulling off my jeans, all too aware of the angry ache in my thigh. Despite having a fairly good idea of what I would find, the sight of the scar itself threw me for a moment. A substantial chunk of the rectus femoris had been removed, leaving an ugly indentation. But the edges were smooth and the wound had healed properly, suggesting surgery, possibly following a severe injury or a clot cutting circulation to the muscle. I was probably lucky not to have lost the whole leg.

None of this had offered any promising clues to the trigger for my amnesia, though, so it was time to dig deeper. I foraged for some phlebotomy supplies, tied a tourniquet, and slipped the needle into my median cubital, apparently with the ease of long practice. I filled three vials of blood before applying pressure; without any knowledge of my recent whereabouts or activities, there were a number of tests I’d need to run. Afterwards I collected a urine sample, and found myself fighting the uneasy feeling that I was fingering a stranger’s cock. At least my dimensions were nothing to be ashamed about.

***

I found the Pathology Lab and dropped off the blood and urine samples, labeled with a fake name since I couldn’t remember that of our patient. The medical technician who accepted them didn’t attempt to hide her astonishment. “You mean His Lordship is actually going to trust mere mortals to run his labs? Never thought I’d see the day.” Then she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Or is this some kind of test? Making an end run around your team so you can show them up later?”

Grasping gratefully at this explanation, I nodded. “You know me too well. Make sure the results get reported directly to me, would you?”

“Sure thing,” she said with a wink. “You take care, now.” As I left the room, I heard her whisper to the woman next to her, “He’s actually kind of cute when he’s not trying to take your head off.”

***

While I waited for my test results, I rooted surreptitiously through my desk drawers. I swooped down on a bag containing change of clothing, glad to see that I was capable of planning for such contingencies. Ten minutes later, I had found the locker rooms and was washing the worst of the alcohol and stale sweat off of my skin. I was a little nervous about the possibility that I might seize or suffer another loss of consciousness in the shower, but whatever had affected me earlier in the day didn’t recur.

***

I found myself squinting and holding the computer printout at arm’s length, apparently having omitted to bring a pair of reading glasses to work with me this morning. Liver enzyme levels were slightly elevated, but that could have been due to my obviously heavy drinking of the night before. More ominously, the AST/ALT ratio was up, suggesting that my recent binge was not an anomalous event. I resolved to take it easy on the alcohol for a few days and then retest myself to make sure that my liver wasn’t fried. Meanwhile, all of the tox screens I’d requested had come back negative.

I sighed and rubbed my strained eyes. There were still plenty of possibilities, many undetectable by current methods. A family and medical history might help. Tomorrow I’d see about getting my hands on my medical records.

I wondered who my primary physician was.

***

My team reconvened at the end of the afternoon to report our diagnosis confirmed and the patient discharged, the small stone having passed. I was a little surprised that I hadn’t been alerted so that I could say good-bye myself, but on the whole, it was probably fortunate since I would have had to pretend that I remembered her, and really I’d prefer as few opportunities to fuck up as possible.

By this time, I’d had a chance to review my team members’ personnel files and at least didn’t have to worry about screwing up their names or specialties, although I found it difficult to hide how appalled I was by the absurdly long stints Chase and Foreman had apparently done as Diagnostic fellows. Either they were singularly lacking in ambition or their mentor – _me_ , I had to remind myself – had found them to be irreplaceable, but so far, I had little data by which to distinguish between these hypotheses. I also didn’t understand why I had agreed to hire a third year medical student, even one as obviously bright as Masters, or why an older, obviously successful plastic surgeon in private practice had decided to take this position at a tenth the salary.

Regardless, I dismissed them for the day, relieved that I had managed to maintain my imitation of the man they knew so well. From our case files and a couple of quick Google searches, I knew that I was the founding chair of Diagnostic Medicine at PPTH, that we rarely had more than one patient at a time, and that I was quite particular about those whom I chose to accept. Apparently only the most difficult diagnostic puzzles were worthy of our attention; sometimes days or even weeks went by without a new one. In the meantime, though, I saw several automated email reminders that I had clinic duty tomorrow morning beginning at eight (underlined, with the annotation, “No, this is not a joke. You owe me.”)

***

As promised, Wilson appeared at my office door punctually at seven. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” I hesitated, then shut off my computer monitor without logging out. Tomorrow I’d have to try to figure out my password. Maybe I could convince the hospital’s IT personnel that it had been so long since I’d used it that I’d forgotten. Something.

“How’s your patient?”

“Oh…” I racked my brain for the patient’s name and came up with exactly squat. “Gonna be fine, I think. We diagnosed late onset LNS, prescribed some allopurinol, and discharged her.”

Wilson nodded. “What tipped you off?”

“Radiolucent stones. That, and recent personality changes.”

“Huh. Well, anyway, that’s great news. You hungry?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, then reached for my cane.

“I was thinking I’d just order a pizza over,” Wilson mused as we walked down the corridor together. “I know you’ve got beer. Although maybe you should consider giving your liver the night off.”

“I can’t even think about alcohol right now,” I admitted. “But mi cerveza es tu cerveza.”

Wilson glanced over at me and frowned. He took a few more steps, then did it again. “Something’s different about you.”

“Well, I’ve showered and changed since you saw me earlier. Couldn’t stand my own stink.”

“Yeah,” Wilson waved a hand, “Believe me, I noticed and appreciated it, but that’s not it.” Suddenly he stopped and snapped his fingers. “You’re using your cane with your left hand!”

“That’s the side it’s _supposed_ to be on,” I pointed out, cursing myself for my own carelessness. I hadn’t even considered the fact that of course everyone would be accustomed to seeing me using the cane improperly. I opted for attempting to brazen my way out of this. “Any first year PT student could tell you that. Using it on the same side as the injury causes posture problems.”

“Okay,” Wilson said dubiously. “But that’s never stopped you before.”

“First time for everything,” I said, glad that he couldn’t know just how much I meant by that statement.

***

Wilson was a conservative driver, as I might have predicted from everything else I’d observed about him, and he had terrible taste in music. I flipped through all of his presets, snorting, before scanning through the available stations on my own and finally settling on a classic Aerosmith song, air-drumming along to the lyrics. “I gotta take myself a permanent vacation / the sky’s the limit but my plane won’t fly…” Wilson rolled his eyes a little but didn’t say a word.

Once the song faded into a commercial, I wondered how long it had been since I’d ridden in his car; surely I would have taken the earliest opportunity to reprogram his stereo. Although his words to me this morning suggested that perhaps we had been estranged for some time, and had gotten together last night unexpectedly. And he’d known that I was hungover, and that I had beer, so maybe he’d come over to my apartment, we’d had a bit too much to drink, and one thing had led to another? I was still puzzling over this when we turned onto Baker Street, and shortly after that we were pulling up to the curb in front of 221.

I was relieved to see that I only had one plausible house key on my keychain and wouldn’t have to try to guess which one opened my front door. Even more happily, my hand reached automatically for the light switch on the wall when I stepped through into the apartment. I had to remind myself to act casual – it would only look weird if I stood around gawking like I’d just been invited into someone else’s home. Although that was, in fact, exactly what it felt like, or so I imagined.

Wilson, though, was obviously comfortable, in familiar surroundings. “Here’s my wallet in case the pizza guy comes while I’m the bathroom,” he said, tossing it to me and heading down the hall. Fine; that gave me a chance to get a good look at my surroundings without him noticing.

It was an intriguing space, cluttered but not messy, masculine but not macho. Curious objects and short stacks of books covered the mantelpiece and heavy wooden desk, and tall bookcases filled with an eclectic selection of volumes arranged in no discernable order lined another wall. Next to the fireplace shone a gorgeous black baby grand Yamaha, with a series of vintage guitars mounted lovingly on the wall behind. In contrast to the reasonable neatness of most of the living room, the large leather sofa had a pillow propped at one end and was half-draped in a wool blanket, as though its occupant had hastily flung off the covers that morning and then had been too busy to return to fold and put it away.

Oddly, despite the decided abundance of character, there was almost nothing in the way of personal memorabilia – framed art, yes, but no portraits, no photo albums, no obvious souvenirs. There also had been no attempts to create a space suitable for entertaining – no company chairs, and meals would be taken in front of the television set. This was clearly the home of a solitary man of many interests and a haven from the outside world.

Right, I was supposed to be packing. I limped down the hall, found myself facing a closed door that apparently separated me from Wilson washing his hands, and turned left into a bedroom. Full-sized bed with a solid wood frame and gunmetal gray sheets, unmade; a desk, a dresser, and more bookcases filled to overflowing. Here as well, while pieces of framed art had been hung on the walls and propped on available surfaces, there was a marked absence of evidence of personal connection. No photograph albums, no journals, no greeting cards or handwritten letters.

Could I really be a man who cared so little about being surrounded by the words and faces of friends and family members? Or, ironically, had my excellent memory simply rendered such things superfluous?

These explanations were not, I reminded myself, mutually exclusive.

Wilson stuck his head in the open doorway while I was musing over these matters. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, fine. Forgot to bring a bag in with me.”

“Probably in the hall closet,” Wilson said helpfully, and returned a moment later with a compact wheeled carryon. “All you need for now are the essentials, a few days’ worth of clothes. We can come back this weekend for the bigger stuff.” Just then the doorbell rang, and he disappeared once more in search of dinner.

While Wilson paid the delivery boy, I went into the bathroom to pack a toiletries bag. Going through the medicine cabinet gave me a funny feeling of invading someone else’s privacy. There was nothing stronger than ibuprofen in the way of painkillers, but I did find a vial of Effexor past the expiration date. No cologne, no aftershave, I didn’t even own a decent razor. I rubbed the rough stubble on my face irritably. It wouldn’t do to make any abrupt changes in my appearance, but maybe I could gradually acquire some new habits.

***

I paid close attention to our route from my apartment to Wilson’s loft, which was on Brook Street, in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Princeton. It was nearly nine when Wilson pulled into his own parking space in the lot next to our destination. The lobby was a little cluttered, but clean and respectable, with white crown moldings and old-fashioned brass mailboxes.

“Greg!” This from an attractive early forty-something woman with shoulder-length honey-blond hair who had been pulling a handful of letters out of the mailbox marked 3B. “It’s been so long!” She looked down at my rollerbag, then up again. “Are you going to be staying for a while?”

“I think that’s the plan,” I said, with a pleasant smile and a glance at Wilson, who, unaccountably, was looking kind of tense.

“Well, this should liven things up a bit around here,” she smirked. “Listen, I know we really got off on the wrong foot last year, but go ahead and let me know if you need anything. My toolbox is still at your disposal.”

“I hope that’s a euphemism,” I offered gallantly.

“Oh, you are too much! As if James would stand still for that,” she winked, her grin faltering slightly as she got a good look at Wilson’s face. “Kidding. Well, I won’t keep you. Welcome back!”

“Thanks,” I said sincerely.

“I still think James’ proposal to you was the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen,” she called after us as we entered the elevator. _Jesus._ I had to fight down the impulse to react, to check my finger for evidence of a ring. Wilson had _proposed_ to me in front of this neighbor of ours? Had I accepted? And if Wilson and I had been that committed a couple only last year, what terrible thing could have happened to tear us apart in the meantime? Plus it meant that this moving in together again had to be a huge deal. I really hoped that I wasn’t going to blow it.

“What’s eating you?” I couldn’t help asking as Wilson punched irritably at the buttons.

He sighed. “Oh, just flashing back to when we first moved in together. You really milked the gay couple card for all it was worth, remember?”

I didn’t at all, so I decided that I’d better steer us away from a potentially damning conversation as quickly as possible. “So, um, that reminds me, I should probably have my mail redirected… if you really think I’m going to be here for a while.”

“Sure,” Wilson said stoutly, pulling out a set of keys and unlocking the door. “Oh, before I forget, here’s your copy.” He handed me a shiny silver house key, which I hefted contemplatively in my hand for a moment before putting it into my pocket.

Lagging behind, I quickly flipped through the small stack of mail on the table in the entryway while Wilson had his back to me. _James Wilson. James E. Wilson_. And below those, two envelopes, mass-mailings from the look of them, for _Gregory House_. I shivered a little, feeling like I’d just been brushed by the ghost of my former life. Then Wilson turned around, and I had to fight the urge to jump like a guilty schoolboy. “Oh, yeah, there’s a couple that came for you yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t bother to bring them to work since…”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, struggling to sound casual. “Don’t worry about it. Probably isn’t anything important.”

“That’s what I figured, just junk mail.” I followed Wilson into the spacious common area, which was lovely, high ceilings and hardwood floors and fireplace with a classic mantelpiece at the far end. The furniture was in muted, neutral shades of cream and brown, high-quality but impersonal, exactly like what I imagined a decent decorator would do for her well-heeled, childless bachelor client. The notable, jarring exception was a odd-shaped piece in one corner, covered by an expensive-looking linen sheet.

Wilson walked past the dining table and breakfast bar into the well-appointed kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, then washed it out and placed it to dry. I inferred that Wilson was just this side of anal retentive and/or exceedingly reluctant to give others any reason to clean up after him, and from the excellence of the appliances and cookware that he must be at least a semi-serious amateur chef. “Anyway, I’ll let you get settled. Your room is pretty much like you left it. Bed’s already made up, but I can change the sheets if you want – they might be kind of dusty by now.”

My bed? So we wouldn’t be sharing one, at least not tonight. I recalled the abandoned blanket on my couch and realized that it most likely had last covered Wilson, who had failed to hear me leave in the morning. Well, we weren’t horny teenagers, and maybe two middle-aged men set in their ways needed their own space. Maybe one of us snored stentoriously. We might well have been involved for so long that Wilson felt no further explanations were necessary and was ready to slip right back into casual routine. Meanwhile, I had so many questions that I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t risk blowing my cover. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“And House...”

“Yeah?”

“I won’t mind if you use the tub in my bathroom to soak your leg,” he said, sounding a bit embarrassed. “The safety rail is still in your closet if you want to reinstall it.”

“Thanks.” Wilson still seemed to be waiting for something else. His face looked wan and oddly vulnerable. I hesitated, wondering whether I should touch him, maybe take his hand.

But then he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. Think I’ll turn in early.”

“Yeah, me too. I have clinic duty at eight.”

A look of surprise flickered across his features, then was gone. “You can ride in with me, if you want.”

“Great.”

Wilson nodded and started to walk away, then pivoted to look me in the eye and said simply, “It’s good to have you here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad to be back, too.”

I watched as a wave of relief washed through him and left him swaying slightly on his feet. “That’s-“ he stopped and allowed himself to smile, which suddenly took twenty years off his tired face. “Good night, House.”

“Good night,” I echoed, and limped thoughtfully after him to dump my bag in the empty bedroom. In defiance of my exhaustion, my thoughts were racing without reprieve as I changed into an old t-shirt and pajama pants, gulped down a couple of ibuprofen, and brushed my teeth. The dramatic events of the day had kept me distracted, but now that I was alone and trying to relax, all of my doubts and distress returned with a vengeance. What the hell had I gotten myself into? What would Wilson be expecting of me? How long would I be able to maintain this insane charade? I was so woefully ignorant, and there were just so many goddamn ways for me to screw this up.

And it was much more than that. As babies, it doesn’t occur to us to question the lives we’re born into, the more or less lucky roll of the genetic and environmental dice. To be dropped fully formed into a stranger’s life, and an apparently sad and solitary, if respected, one at that, was deeply unsettling. If only I could be free at this point to develop, to discover my essential self. But “I” had no independent existence apart from Gregory House, and whether or not my memories returned, I would have to learn to be this man, to live this life.

With so much on my mind, I thought that going to bed was likely to prove futile, and in fact I tossed and turned for a good thirty minutes. But then Wilson’s face, glowing with that last, unexpected expression of genuine joy, slipped soothingly into my thoughts like a Seconal, and the next thing I knew, it was morning.

 


	2. Straight Talk

**Chapter 2: Straight Talk**   
**  
_“Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department.”_   
**

 

Clearly I was not a morning person. Despite my full night’s sleep, I had a hell of a time dragging myself out of bed and found myself half-dozing on my feet in front of the john before I slapped some water on my face and livened up a little. But towards the end of my shower, I felt good enough to sing, and I had to admit that the acoustics in my bathroom were pretty impressive.

Not surprisingly, Wilson was ready to leave long before I got myself cleaned up and dressed, but he waited patiently in the living room, watching the morning news. His only comment on my impromptu concert was a mild, “I was just thinking that it had been far too long since I listened to George Michael.”

 _“Baby,”_ I chimed in, bumping him with my hip, and slung my backpack over my shoulders.

Wilson stopped the car by a Starbucks on our way to work, ordered a complicated coffee concoction for each of us and a couple of breakfast sandwiches without consulting me, then paid for them and whisked us away again. Once the caffeine started flowing in my veins, I found myself humming under my breath. This didn’t escape the notice of Wilson, who observed, “You’re in a good mood this morning.”

I chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said, staring straight ahead.

***

Since it was already almost eight and we’d discharged our most recent patient, I decided to forego stopping by my office and instead tucked my backpack under the duty nurse’s desk while he was otherwise occupied. As I was swinging back around the corner, I nearly collided with an attractive woman who had appeared without warning, and caught myself with my cane just in time. She, in turn, started and put her hand to her throat, then lowered it almost immediately as if embarrassed.

Blue eyes, long dark hair, slender, but with a substantial ass that made its presence felt even under the conservative navy skirt. Lovely enough, but with a closed, lined face that I suspected to be rigid with suppressed grief. There were thin tracings of recent scars crossing the bridge of her nose and spiderwebbing one cheekbone. My top two picks were domestic violence or a vehicular accident. “Dr. House,” she said in a low, carefully controlled voice, not meeting my eyes. “I’m surprised to see you here so early.”

“I’m scheduled to cover the clinic,” I explained, feeling a little at a loss.

Now she looked at me sharply, as if sure that there was a punchline forthcoming, but when I stayed silent, she only compressed her lips and walked away. I watched as she entered the Dean of Medicine’s office and sat down behind the desk.

I leaned towards the duty nurse and jerked a thumb in the dean’s direction. “What’s her story?”

Jeffrey Sparkman, RN glared at me, disgust written plainly on his features. “Un-frakking-believable,” he growled, and went back to organizing patient files. “Here.” He grabbed a blue folder, practically shoved it into my hand. “Exam room two.”

***

I had just dropped off my last folder at the nurse’s station when Wilson strolled up. “Lunch?”

“Sure,” I agreed, falling easily into step beside him despite the encumbrance of my cane.

Wilson craned his neck, staring over around my shoulder. “House, that last patient of yours looked… happy.”

“What? Oh, yeah. We had a very pleasant conversation about guitar amps after I explained to him exactly why it was so important to take the full course of antibiotics as prescribed instead of throwing them away once he felt better. Nice guy.”

Wilson’s brow furrowed as we continued along the corridor, but he forbore to comment.

In the cafeteria, I followed Wilson’s lead, grabbing a salad and ordering a half sandwich. He looked at me quizzically as he shoved his tray along the counter. “I thought you liked them dry.”

“Thought I’d change it up a little,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the sweat I could feel breaking out on my brow. “Hey, can I have your pickle?”

“Now you want my _pickle?_ ”

“Jimmy, please,” I leered, glancing around at the thinly veiled amusement of the staff surrounding us. “I thought we talked about which topics were and were not appropriate for the workplace.”

Wilson cringed a little but seemed to accept that comment as par for the course, and I relaxed.

“Separate or together?” the cashier asked in a bored tone, barely looking up.

Wilson already had his wallet out and an oddly resigned expression on his face, but I quickly reached across his tray to hand her a wad of cash, saying, “Let me get this.” Two heads snapped around; two jaws dropped. The cashier’s eyebrows had climbed into her hairline, and Wilson was regarding me as though tempted to check the back of my neck for an alien appendage.

“You feelin’ all right today, Dr. House?”

“Why, yes,” – I quickly checked her nametag – “Linda, I’m feeling just fine, thank you for asking. And how are you?”

As soon as I had my change, Wilson hustled us along to a corner table, glancing nervously over his shoulder. I knew that he was eyeing me surreptitiously while we ate, although he glanced down at his plate every time I attempted to catch him at it. About halfway through, I snatched the pickle off his plate and bit into it, then made a face and put it back.

“You don’t like pickles,” Wilson pointed out, much more patiently than I probably deserved. “You’ve _never_ liked pickles.”

“It just looked so good sitting on your plate,” I muttered.

Wilson rolled his eyes. “What else is new.”

I finished before he had and sat toying with the remains of my salad, thinking about the afternoon ahead. “So, Wilson, about tonight…”

“Go ahead and eat dinner without me, I’ll be back late,” Wilson said around a mouthful of sandwich. I looked up at him sharply, so he elaborated, “Dying patient.”

“And you’re sure it’s going to be tonight?”

He cocked his head and gave me a pointed look, and I suddenly realized my mistake. Of course. Wilson was an oncologist, after all. He knew that his patient was going to die because he was going to be there to help him, or her, along. But his face betrayed no disappointment, no defeat. There was a certain sadness there, yes, but mainly a calm confidence in the role he was to play.

“I don’t know how you do that,” I said in honest admiration.

“Meaning?”

“How you take on these losing battles, year in, year out.”

“Comes with the territory,” he shrugged, feigning nonchalance, although his dark eyes told a different story.

“Yeah, but you staked out that territory. What kind of person chooses a specialty in which most diagnoses are death sentences?”

Wilson frowned. “You just don’t like to lose. You want to swoop in and solve the problem, and then you’ve won whether the patient lives or dies. But there’s more to medicine than that. Sometimes we know that giving people a little more time, for their work, for their loved ones, is all we can do. But it’s worth doing.” He leaned back and crossed his legs, folding his hands over his knee. “And then at some point we have to accept that it’s time to stop fighting and let them go.” He gave me a hard look. “But not until then.”

“And tonight’s the night.”

“Yeah.” He sat up again, gathered his tray together, and stood. “Don’t wait up.”

***

My team was waiting when I finally made it up to the fourth floor, apparently having ordered in Chinese food for lunch, although all of the physical evidence had been cleared away. Chase and Foreman were playing chess at the desk in the corner, Masters was reading up on rare genetic diseases, and Taub looked like I might have interrupted his nap. But they all looked up and straightened unconsciously when I arrived. I tossed my backpack on the conference table. “No patient today.”

Chase and Foreman exchanged glances but said nothing. Finally Taub piped up, “But fortunately you’ve had all morning to dream up increasingly tedious ways to keep all of us occupied, so…”

“Go home.”

“Excuse me?”

“Go home. Take the day off. You all did a great job yesterday, and you gave up your weekends. So go home. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

Chase leaned in and whispered to Foreman, “Did he just say…”

“Yeah,” Foreman nodded, not taking my eyes off me, as though I might spontaneously combust at any second.

“Good enough for me,” Taub said, and stood up. As he disappeared through the doorway, I caught him giving Chase and Foreman a “screw’s loose” gesture out of the corner of my eye.

“Are you feeling okay?” Foreman asked.

“Never better. Now go on, get out of here.”

Chase folded his arms obstinately. “Why are you suddenly trying to get rid of us?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I huffed. “Can’t a guy do something nice for his employees once in a while?”

“Not if that guy is you,” Foreman said, clearly only half-kidding.

Just then, Taub walked back in, a peculiar expression on his face and a bouquet of dark pink roses and campanula in his arms. He held the flowers out to me. “These are for you from a Mrs. Robbins.”

I fished out the small rectangular card, then pulled my glasses out of my breast pocket in order to read it. “Dear Doctor House, Thank you for being so gentle and understanding, and for explaining everything so clearly. I wish more doctors were like you. With gratitude, Susanne Robbins.”

“Has this woman actually met you?” Taub wondered.

Behind me, Chase and Foreman could hardly contain themselves. “You sent those to yourself, didn’t you?” Chase gasped, pointing a finger at me. “Admit it!”

“I certainly will not,” I replied with dignity. “And just for that, you can take my next set of clinic hours.” That shut him up, although oddly he looked more relieved than irritated.

“Where do you want me to put these?” Taub asked, his arms starting to sag.

“Oh…” I had a sudden brainstorm. “Stick them in some water and take them over to Wilson’s office, would you?”

“Would you like to leave a note?” There was just the faintest hint of sarcasm lacing his carefully articulated query.

“Nah. He’ll know who sent them.”

***

Analyzing my medical records proved to be at once easier and more complicated than I’d expected. The records room itself was absurdly accessible to anyone who bothered to venture down into the bowels of the hospital, and I found both my medical and personnel file folders without any trouble. However, once I’d gotten them back up to my office, I quickly realized that some joker had gone through and substituted a series of dummy patient records in my personnel file, all of which listed the name of the Dean of Medicine. And I had an uncomfortable feeling that the anti-authoritarian comedian in question was me.

When I turned instead to my medical file, it was a similar story. Many of the records appeared to be legit, most of these written in a left-handed scrawl and signed by – surprise! – one J. Wilson. But quite a few of them involved highly unlikely procedures, including an orchiectomy in May 2010 and the treatment of concussion with deep brain stimulation two years earlier. I probably had my own old self to thank for the fact that I wouldn’t really be able to trust anything I read here.

I suppose that I should have suspected as much from the Post-it note attached to the first page of the folder: “Any further unauthorized alterations will be dealt with severely. YES, HOUSE, THIS MEANS YOU.”

***

I decided to take my medical file home with me so that I could peruse it at my leisure in the effort to sort out fact from fiction. Around seven I took a break to munch a couple of slices of cold pizza, thinking about what I’d read so far.

The missing muscle in my leg dated back to about eleven years earlier, when I’d been admitted to PPTH complaining of severe pain. The notes indicated that I had eventually been diagnosed with a clotted aneurysm leading to an infarction, but only after significant damage to the affected muscle, which had been surgically removed. Apparently I had gone into cardiac arrest from the potassium released when the clot was broken up, and also had been placed into a chemically induced coma for the pain prior to the surgery. The authorization for the muscle amputation was signed by a Stacy Adler.

It was difficult to get a clear picture of the years since the infarction from my file, largely due to the many alterations and apparent omissions, only some of which I might be able to detect. There was one interesting entry regarding the use of ketamine during emergency surgery for a gunshot wound, after reading which I had found myself unconsciously fingering the old scar. I wondered whether the ketamine had been administered in an intentional attempt to reboot my brain and eliminate excitatory nerve activity, essentially ghost pain from the missing muscle. The records were quiet on the subject, but if I had insisted on such a risky experiment, the residual pain must have been plenty severe. Oddly, the records from the next six months appeared to be missing.

I returned to my reading, switching on a lamp as the light of early evening faded. Towards the end of the file, there was another gap of several months before I found records of a complete physical examination. But given that this was followed by a urine test on a sample apparently collected from a golden retriever, I wasn’t sure how seriously I could take any of it.

I must have dozed off, because when the front door rattled, I found myself sprawling sideways on the couch, my glasses sliding askew over my nose. Hastily I fumbled for my medical file and shoved it under the seat cushion just before Wilson walked in, yawning widely.

“It’s over?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

Wilson nodded, rubbing his eyes. He looked exhausted. “It’s over. What are you still doing up?”

“I thought you might want a drink, or some tea…” He started shaking his head. “Or maybe just to talk…”

“I’m fine,” he said, looking at me strangely. “Really. It’s late. Let’s just… go to bed.”

I was about to follow Wilson into his bedroom before he shut the door and locked it with a quiet _click_.

 _Shit._ Shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. He had warned me not to wait up, and I had already figured out that underneath his friendly demeanor, Wilson was a pretty private person. And maybe it was better this way; I had so many questions after reading my records that I would have been sorely tempted to attempt to extract information from him, which might have given the game away.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed as I took refuge in my own bed, alone, for the second night in a row.

***

In spite of his late night, Wilson was up long before me once again. I pulled the pillow over my head to try to drown out the drone of his hair dryer, but as soon as it stopped, I was finally forced to concede my bladder the victory and stumble into the bathroom. I was still half-asleep, and my vision was blurred, so it came as a complete surprise when my stream bounced back _up_ out of the toilet and started splattering around the bowl.

“ _What the-_ “ Before I could even finish that thought, Wilson unexpectedly elbowed his way in from behind me. I barely had time to register the fact that he was wearing latex gloves before he peeled off the Saran wrap, pulling up the corners, and whisked it away. By the time I’d gathered my wits together, the front door had slammed, and I found myself standing alone on the wet, slightly steaming tile with my dick still in my hand.

***

It didn’t occur to me right away that Wilson had stranded me; only once I’d showered and thrown on some clothes did I realize that I would have to call a cab. It also took me a few extra minutes to find Wilson’s office; I’d expected it to be in or near Oncology, not on the fourth floor, even though he’d come out on the balcony to find me that first day.

The door was closed, but not locked, so without bothering to knock, I wrenched the knob and shoved it open with my shoulder.

“Are you _insane?_ What the hell was that about?”

Half-hidden behind yesterday’s floral offering, Wilson looked up at my abrupt entrance, folding his arms across his chest defensively. “I needed a urine sample,” he said, as if that should explain everything.

“What the fuck _for_?”

“I had to run some tests.”

“You couldn’t have just asked me for a sample if it was that important?”

“And you would have dropped trou and handed it over? House, your team is worried. They came to me yesterday complaining that you’d been behaving strangely.” He lowered his voice. “They thought you might be using again.”

“Why would they think that?”

Wilson cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been acting happy, House. And even… _nice_.” He said this as if some fundamental law of the universe had been violated. “So Chase and Foreman figured you must be getting some, either sex or drugs, and I’m in a good position to know that it’s not the former. Hence the drug test.”

 _Hmm. Note to self: In future, try to act like a much bigger prick._ In the meantime, I concentrated on finding the right balance between resignation and righteous indignation. “ _And?_ ”

“And… and nothing. The results came back clean.”

“Well, I could have told you that.”

“You _would_ have told me that, but how could I have been sure?”

“You don’t trust me,” I said, more because it had just dawned on me than in an attempt to provoke any particular reaction. This man, who was probably the most important person in my life, didn’t trust me. And for all I knew, he had very good reasons not to. I had to wonder how many details of my medical history post-infarction were not included in my official records. Dependence on painkillers, probably. Perhaps worse.

Wilson confirmed these suspicions with his next words. “Addicts lie. _Everybody_ lies, House. That’s practically your motto.”

“Still,” I said. “ _Seriously?_ What did you think you were doing, reliving your fraternity days?”

“You know damned well that you were the one who gave me the idea in the first place,” he responded indignantly. Then he added, deadpan, “Besides, it was either that, or Chase was going to molest you in the men’s room. But I told him that the next time you punched him in the face, you might not leave it so pretty.”

What in the hell had he meant by that? Had Chase… Had I… This conversation was absolutely crazy-making. I steadied myself with a deep breath and deliberately changed the subject.

“Like the flowers?”

Wilson glanced over at them and back at me. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re nice. Thanks for having them sent over.”

“They’re from a patient,” I said proudly.

Wilson sighed. “You have _got_ to stop stealing stuff from patients’ rooms.”

***

Wilson cooked tonight – some kind of roasted cabbage stew that smelled like ass but tasted amazing – and we broke open a six-pack of Hop Devil and settled back on the sofa together in front of the Discovery Channel. I kept waiting for Wilson to start up a conversation, or at the very least cop a feel, but he seemed content to watch fish change sexes in order to move up the dominance hierarchy and a pair of male penguins practice incubating an egg. I, on the other hand, was finding it more and more difficult to keep my hands to myself, especially as the warm glow of the alcohol started tingling in my belly and regions south.

Near the end of my third beer, a belch took me by surprise, and Wilson gave me a reproving glance.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just very _relaxed_ right now. Although,” I added with a meaningful look, “not _too_ much so. If you’re, um, in the mood.”

“In the mood for what?” Wilson asked, looking honestly puzzled. Which was weird, because while I couldn’t actually claim to know very much about either of us at this point, I was pretty sure that seduction was his department. But maybe he was more of a passive panty-peeler – Mr. Nice Guy, helps you move, lets you cry on his shoulder, and the next thing you know, you’re grabbing him by a well-manicured hand and dragging him to bed.

“Oh, come on… _Jimmy_. Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Smirking a little, I started to lean in, putting my hand on his knee for balance as well as a suggestive squeeze. It was almost like I was moving in slo-mo, with Wilson watching, wide-eyed, lips parting in surprise, as I came closer. But then, just as my mouth was about to make contact with his, he jerked away, I fell awkwardly against him, and we were both left staring at each other in horrified astonishment.

“ _What are you_ -“

“I thought we were-“

Wilson was flushed with confusion and embarrassment, perspiration beading on his forehead. He pushed me away, jumped up, and started to pace, hands on his hips. I could see his carotid pulsing in overdrive. “ _House_ ,” he burst out at last, “what the _hell_ is going on with you?”

 _BUSTED._

“My mistake,” I told him meekly. “I, uh, haven’t been myself lately.”

“You’re telling me? Treating your team with kid gloves, turning up for clinic duty on time, buying me lunch?” He was pointing at me accusingly, as if he’d caught me drowning puppies. “And now this? Are we in Bizarro world? Are you _trying_ to make me insane?”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting? I mean, if you didn’t want me to make any moves on you, why did you bring me back here?”

Wilson stared at me. “Is this a joke? Trying to trick one of the new neighbors? Do you have a hidden camera somewhere?”

“Wilson, Jesus. I just thought that now that Sam’s gone, that you wanted…”

“What? What exactly did you think I wanted?” He was practically panting, and red in the face.

“Forget it,” I said abruptly. “I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood. I’ll move back out tomorrow.” I started to push past him towards my bedroom, but he heaved a sigh, covering his face with one hand, and I hesitated.

“House, no. Wait. _Talk_ to me. I know that’s not… what we _do_ , and I’ve tried not to push, but...” he trailed off, looking torn.

Wilson might not have been my main man in exactly the manner that I’d thought, but something told me that he was on my side, that he’d move heaven and earth to help me if he knew I needed him. Besides, handicapped as I was by my own ignorance, an ally who could help me navigate the treacherous shores of my assumed identity would be invaluable. Wilson calmed down gradually as I explained everything, starting from the moment when I woke on the floor of what turned out to be my own office, and by the time I got to the end of what was for me our first meeting, he was sitting on the sofa again and starting to make sounds that I could only describe as a giggle.

“Wow,” he said. “And so you thought I… _wow_.”

“So, _not_ my ex-boyfriend, then.” I was more than a little disappointed.

“Uh, no. Although we have lived together before. When I started seeing Sam again, I… well, I asked you to leave.” He paused, looking momentarily contrite. “To give us some space.”

“So Sam was your ex-boyfriend.”

“What, _no_. Samantha Carr. My ex-wife.”

“O- _kay_. The framed poster of _A Chorus Line_ could have fooled me. So… we moved in together because you and your ex-wife Sam split up, but then you two decided to give it another try?”

Wilson sighed and rubbed his temples. “It’s not… quite that simple. Look, House: we’ve known each other for a long time, there’s a lot of history here, and… frankly, I’m not sure I’m ready to recap it in a few breezy sentences after one too many beers.”

“Well, I’ll take whatever you can give me, because I can’t remember a fucking thing from before three days ago.”

He cocked his head at me curiously. “What _do_ you remember? I mean, you obviously haven’t had any trouble speaking, reading, getting around…” His gaze roved around the room, coming to rest on the covered object in the corner. “Can you still play?”

“I think you’re missing the main point here,” I grumbled, but I limped over and unveiled the instrument, a gorgeous antique organ, sat down at the bench, and ran my fingers admiringly over the keys. Then I looked up at Wilson. “What songs do I know?”

He shrugged. “As far as I could tell, anything you’d ever heard played once.”

“ _Yeah_ , that’s very helpful.”

“Maybe you’ve retained muscle memory.” He made some vague flicking motions with his fingers. “Just start playing and see what happens.”

I touched a couple of keys tentatively, then a couple more. My confidence grew as I recognized the opening strains of “Amazing Grace,” which sounded absolutely incredible on this instrument, with an eerie, mournful undertone. As the last notes of the fourth phrase died away, Wilson cleared his throat.

“ _That_ was unexpected.”

“Cool,” I said, staring at my hands. I started to stand up, looking over at Wilson. “Here, your turn.”

He shook his head. “I don’t play.”

“You don’t? Why do you have this, then? Is it Sam’s?”

“No,” he said, looking uncomfortable again, “it’s yours. After we moved in here together, you told me that I should pick out some furniture, and I, um, bought it for you.”

We were just friends, reluctant roommates, and he gave me the organ as a gift? This made no sense to me. Wilson’s unease suggested that the same thought had occurred to him. “When was that, exactly?”

“Oh… about a year ago. Just before I started seeing Sam again.”

He seemed unable or unwilling to fully grasp the significance of this timing, but I found it highly suspicious. I felt virtually certain that my original intuitions about our relationship had been no accident. Too bad that Wilson wasn’t as ready to acknowledge the attraction, even to himself. But in the meantime, I had bigger worries.

“Wilson,” I said, looking him intently in the eye, “promise me that you won’t tell anyone. I don’t know when my memories are going to come back, if ever, and if Dean Cuddy finds out about this, I won’t be allowed to practice. I could even lose my license.”

“House, you’re kidding, I can’t…” he blew out his breath in a huff of frustration. “What am I supposed to do, follow you around to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything important?”

“I suppose that’s one option.”

“Yeah, because that worked so well the last time.”

I raised an indignant eyebrow. “Wait, this has happened before?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning. “Not exactly, no. But you have had… other issues.”

“Look, I’m not knowingly going to put any patients in danger. I’ll have my team to do the heavy lifting, and I’m sure they’ll let me know if I suggest anything unreasonable.”

Wilson outright rolled his eyes at that. “Oh, yeah, _that’s_ always been really effective.”

“ _Please_. The medicine is all I’ve got, and I haven’t forgotten any of it. Even that first day, I couldn’t remember the patient’s name, but as soon as Masters recapped her case, I knew what we should do next.”

“Oh,” he said, and pondered for a moment. “Well, I’ll make you a deal. You get Foreman to give you a full neurological work-up tomorrow. If he thinks you’re fit to practice, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Can I trust him? For that matter, can you?”

He shrugged. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. For what it’s worth, I think that you can trust all of your team members to keep your secret, except maybe for Masters. And if you get them on board, maybe they can help figure out what caused your amnesia and whether it’s likely to be temporary or permanent.”

 _“Christ,”_ I groaned, burying my face in my hands for a moment before I looked up again at Wilson. “Maybe you’re right. This is crazy. I have no idea who I am. I don’t even know what I like.”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Monster trucks. Soap operas. Broadway musicals.”

“Musicals? _Seriously?_ ”

“No.” The corner of Wilson’s mouth crooked up.

I felt immediately, irrationally better. I didn’t have the answers – yet – but I had a friend and ally, and I felt optimistic that together we would work it out. Or at least have a hell of an interesting time trying.

“By the way,” I said, hauling myself to my feet once more and reaching for my cane, “I couldn’t ask before, but do you like to go by James, or Jim, or what?”

Even after all of the unexpected events that evening, I think that’s when it really hit him how far I was from the friend he’d known. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I was Jimmy as a kid, James once I decided that I wanted to be taken more seriously. But you have this thing about using first names. Mostly you just call me Wilson.”

I nodded. It fit. Hell, it figured. “Good night, Wilson,” I said, hobbling past him towards my bedroom.

“Good night, House,” he answered, half-smiling at me from the sofa.


	3. Still House

**Chapter 3: Still House**   
_  
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”   
_

 

“Wilson,” I said once we were in the car the next morning, “why did that woman from 3B say that you proposed to me?”

“Nora?” Wilson was obviously struggling to suppress a grin. “I did. Right in the middle of a restaurant and everything.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he added, “I was just screwing with you, obviously.”

“Okay… and why was she there?”

“Look. When we first moved in here, Nora met us and got the wrong impression. I thought she was cute, I was trying to get her to go out with me, but for some reason she was convinced that we were… a couple. And you didn’t exactly do your part to convince her otherwise.”

“So you proposed to me? Way to send mixed messages, Wilson.”

Wilson sighed. “You had some scheme to get into her pants by confiding in her and then allowing her to cure you. So I decided to beat you at your own little game. I bought a ring, tracked you down at dinner, and _voila_. Of course, you had to go and spill the beans to her later.”

“She must have thought we were nuts!”

“I believe ‘mendacious dirtbags’ was the term she used,” Wilson said solemnly. “Seems to have gotten over it, though.”

“So…” I considered for a moment, then plunged ahead. “If we weren’t a couple, then why did we move in together? I mean, my Baker Street address is on my driver’s license from four years ago, so I must have had my own apartment. Was it because you and Sam were splitting up and you needed some company? Why didn’t you just stay with me for a while?”

Wilson gave a short bark of laughter. “Well, it turns out that your apartment isn’t really big enough for the both of us. But it wasn’t that. The truth is, we just… thought that it would be better for you not to live alone for a while.”

I looked at him keenly. “Coincides with the end of a gap in my medical records. Does this have anything to do with the urinalysis you ran yesterday? I know I was on some pretty serious painkillers after the infarction.”

There was a pause. “Yeah,” he said finally. “You were… you’d had a rough year, and your Vicodin use had gotten out of control. You had yourself committed, voluntarily, to a rehab facility near Philly. When you were discharged, I said I’d serve as an unofficial sponsor. But I was renting at the time, and we needed a bigger place, so… I bought this one.”

I was having trouble wrapping my mind around this. “So essentially what you’re saying is, you bought the loft… for me?”

“Well,” Wilson frowned. “I suppose, in a manner of speaking. I mean, you _could_ look at it that way.”

“How else could you look at it?” I asked dryly.

“There was a little matter of revenge against Cuddy.”

“The Dean?” I wasn’t following.

“Yeah, she… had been coming down on you pretty hard, and I heard from my ex-wife that she’d made a bid on the loft, so…”

“Sam’s a realtor?”

“Uh, no. Bonnie is.”

“You have _two_ ex-wives?”

“Three, actually,” Wilson said, and held up his hand. “Please, don’t say anything. I know you can’t remember, but I’ve taken enough crap from you on the subject over the years.”

I kept quiet but felt a sudden surge of hope. _Three_ ex-wives, and apparently he’d bought not only the organ, but the loft itself, for me – whether out of consideration for my comfort or for revenge on my behalf seemed to be beside the point. Who was he trying to kid?

Also, I resolved that if I ever had any reason to believe that I had been the recipient of an organ transplant, the first thing I’d do was to count Wilson’s kidneys.

***

“Where’s Baby Doc?” I demanded of the Three Stooges, tossing my backpack onto the conference table.

Taub shrugged. “Maybe her class is running overtime this morning.”

Perfect. I pulled out the end chair, spun it around, and straddled it. “Differential diagnosis.”

“We have another case already?” Foreman said skeptically.

“Let’s say we do. Male, early fifties, suffered loss of consciousness without apparent head trauma, and currently exhibits severe retrograde amnesia, disorientation, and loss of identity. Procedural and factual memory unaffected, retention of new information unimpaired. Go.”

“Seizure or atypical migraine could cause transient global amnesia,” Chase suggested.

“How transient?”

“Symptoms usually resolve within a day.”

“The hallmark of TGA is short-term memory impairment,” Foreman pointed out.

“Then that’s not it. What else?”

“Had the patient been using alcohol or drugs?” Taub asked.

“A distinct possibility.”

“Blackout. Or chronic alcohol abuse would suggest Korsakoff’s.”

“No,” Chase disagreed. “Those would involve anterograde amnesia as well.”

“I assume that you would have mentioned it if the patient had been treated with ECT,” Foreman said.

“Did I neglect to mention that the patient can’t provide a medical history because he doesn’t actually remember it?”

“Would the aftereffects of ECT be detectable?” Taub asked.

“Autopsy would reveal widespread pinpoint hemorrhages and scattered cell death,” Foreman replied.

“Just for kicks, let’s operate under the assumption that our patient would prefer to survive his diagnosis.”

Foreman shrugged. “ECT has been known to result in a number of other cognitive deficits of varying severity, depending on the duration and intensity of treatment.”

“Could still be drug-induced,” Taub argued. “Certain sedatives, especially in combination with alcohol-”

“How long has this patient been experiencing the amnesia?” Foreman interrupted.

“Oh… since you found me sitting on the floor of my office earlier this week.”

Chase slapped the surface of the conference table, then turned to Foreman and stuck his hand out. “Told you.” Foreman coughed up a fifty just as the med student hurried in.

“Dr. House, you’re early today! What’d I miss?” Masters asked me eagerly, sliding into her usual seat, and not noticing the covert glances exchanged by her three teammates, who apparently agreed with Wilson that she was not to be trusted.

“Hypothetical case,” Taub told her. “Severe, sustained retrograde amnesia without head injury.”

“Game’s over,” I said abruptly. “Thank you for playing.”

***

As soon as he had the opportunity, Foreman practically manhandled me into an empty exam room, leaving Chase and Taub to distract Masters. “You’re making this a lot easier than I expected,” he told me suspiciously, locking the door behind him and gesturing towards a chair.

“Obviously a neurological exam can’t be reliably self-administered,” I replied reasonably, taking a seat as directed. “Why would I consider myself an exception?”

Foreman visibly suppressed a snort before smoothing his face into a more somber expression. “Okay. This is just a routine exam to make sure that your cognitive functions and short-term memory are reasonably intact. I’m going to start by giving you a patient’s name and address for you to commit to memory so I can ask you about it later. Ready? ‘John Black, 42 West Street, Brighton.’”

He had me name the months backwards from December, then count backward from 100 by 6. He pulled out a sheaf of cards with pictures on them and asked me to identify a hammock, feather, key, chair, cactus, and glove. He had me touch my right cheek with my left hand before pointing to the window (simultaneously flourishing the raised middle finger on my right hand was my own idea).

Then Foreman handed me a piece of paper and a pen, asking me to write a sentence about today’s weather. I wrote, “Judging from the line of snotty, damp, red-eyed patients in the clinic this morning, it’s been drizzling off and on, and the pollen count is especially high.” I followed his directions to draw a clock, showing the time as twenty minutes to four, then neatly copied a design of his, two intersecting pentagons. I watched his face closely for signs of dissatisfaction, but Foreman had unreadability down to an art.

“Now I’m going to test a few of your reflexes.” He pulled a penlight out of his pocket and flashed it into my eyes, then had me follow his finger from right to left, up and down. “Tap your thumbs and forefingers together rapidly for me,” he said, demonstrating. I copied him. To my surprise, I saw a shadow of something like sadness fall across his face, although I got the impression that he might be reliving a memory, as opposed to his reaction having anything directly to do with me.

“All right,” he said. “Now I’m supposed to ask you to get up and walk heel to toe in a straight line across the room.”

“Well, why don’t you?” I challenged him.

For the first time, Foreman looked distinctly uncomfortable. “It won’t give me the information that I need. With your leg-“

Abruptly I levered myself to my feet and shoved my cane at Foreman. Gritting my teeth against the searing pain that flared in my thigh every time I put all of my weight on the right leg, I teetered ungracefully but accurately across the room. The wall was only about ten feet away, but by the time I reached it and braced myself against it with one hand, sweat had broken out on my forehead, and my clenched jaw ached. Trembling, I took a few deep breaths and wiped my face on my sleeve before turning back to Foreman. “Well? Do I pass?”

He rose, sauntered over to join me, and handed me my cane without comment, then leaned casually against the exam table. “Just one more thing. Could you think back to the name and address that I gave you at the beginning of the exam and repeat them back to me?”

“Uh,” I said stupidly. My mind was suddenly a blank.

“Was the first name Jane, Joan, John, or Jim?”

Male, the patient had been male. “J… Jim,” I guessed. I could see the faintest flicker of emotion in his eyes.

“Okay. Was the last name Green, Brown, Black, or White?”

“Uh… Brown?” What was _wrong_ with me?

“And the address?”

“42 West Street, Brighton,” I answered with considerably greater confidence.

“Interesting,” Foreman mused. “Well, I think we’re done here.”

My anxiety swelled. I hadn’t recalled correctly. Foreman had decided that I had a short-term memory deficit as well. He was going to tell Cuddy that I was a danger to myself and to our patients. “Hold on,” I blurted. “You had me name a hammock, feather, key, chair, cactus, and glove. When you asked about today’s weather, I wrote, ‘Judging from the line of snotty, damp, red-eyed patients in the clinic this morning, it’s been drizzling off and on, and the pollen count is especially high.’ You had me show the time on the clock as twenty minutes to four.”

Foreman was staring at me, obviously trying not to smirk, one eyebrow creeping up towards what would have been his hairline. “Also, Chase didn’t go home last night – he remembered to change his shirt and pants, but he’s still wearing the same tie, which doesn’t match. Taub is married but separated from his wife and has been living out of a suitcase. And you were once close to someone with a neurodegenerative disease but haven’t dated anyone in years.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Point taken! You’re still House. I’ll keep an eye on you for any signs of impairment, but for now, there’s no need to say anything to anyone.”

I breathed deeply, feeling my legs grow weak under me, and closed my eyes for a moment. “Good,” I managed, the understatement of the year.

Foreman touched me reassuringly on the arm. “Frankly, I would have been _worried_ if you’d remembered the patient’s name.”

***

That wasn’t the end of it, of course. Taub drew blood, Chase convinced me to pee into a cup, and Foreman fingered my scalp and snuck me into Radiology for a CT, but all tests came up negative. Foreman said that it didn’t prove anything one way or the other; too much time had undoubtedly elapsed since the precipitating event, and any drugs or toxins would have had time to clear my system. At least there didn’t appear to be a brain tumor, and I hadn’t suffered recurring seizures or migraines. Maybe the amnesia was the result of some kind of psychological trauma, but none of my fellows seemed able to venture so much as a guess as to what that could have been.

They were, however, unexpectedly eager to fill me in on some of the more lurid details of my life. It was Foreman who suggested that we meet for a drink after work, away from prying med student eyes. Chase grinned and told us to count him in.

“You sure your girlfriends will be able to handle a night without you?” Foreman deadpanned.

“Always leave them wanting more,” Chase advised him.

***

Chase brought the first pitcher to our table, looking more cheerful than I’d seen him all week. “Just like old times,” he said, handing glasses around, “except that Wilson didn’t have to bribe us.”

“Also, no karaoke,” Foreman grunted, pouring himself a pint.

“I do a mean Sinatra,” Taub murmured.

Chase only rolled his eyes as he passed me a beer.

“I have an idea,” Foreman said with studied casualness. “Let’s play ‘Two Truths and a Lie.’ We’ll give you three statements about your past, and you have to guess which one isn’t true.”

“We could make it even more interesting,” Chase mused. “If you can’t tell the difference, the next round is on you.”

“Deal,” I agreed, feeling fairly confident that I’d be able to tell if any of my fellows were lying, even if I couldn’t judge the veracity of the statements themselves.

“One, you once knocked Chase down for disagreeing with your diagnosis,” Foreman smirked.

“Two,” Taub said, “you kidnapped your favorite soap opera star because you thought he had a brain tumor based on the way he was reading off the teleprompter.”

“Three,” Chase put in suddenly, a wicked gleam in his eye. “You accidentally contracted a patient’s disease and then deliberately infected a member of the team to give her more of an incentive to solve the case.”

“Uh…” Frankly, I was pretty appalled at all of the possible options, although I remembered Wilson alluding to my having punched Chase in the face. “Number two is the lie.”

“Nope,” Chase smirked. “That last one was Foreman. That’s one pitcher you owe us.”

Foreman narrowed his eyes at Chase but continued gamely, “One, you gave yourself a migraine to try to prove your former classmate was faking results from his clinical trials, then treated yourself with LSD.”

“Two,” Taub contributed, “you forged Wilson’s signature on your Vicodin prescriptions and then stole his dead patient’s pain meds.”

Chase exchanged startled glances with Foreman. “What?” Taub said. “Word gets around.”

Shrugging, Chase took a large sip from his glass. “Three, you ordered full body irradiation for a patient who turned out to be suffering from a simple bacterial infection and fried her immune system, resulting in her death.”

Foreman stared at Chase. “What is your problem?”

“No problem. Just making the point that House isn’t the only one here with skeletons in his closet.”

“Nice,” Foreman said.

“Whatever. One, you faked a brain tumor in order to get into an experimental drug study at Harvard,” Chase offered.

“Two, you faked test results so that a patient would be misdiagnosed and killed by his treatment,” Foreman ground out.

Chase pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, green eyes cold. “That man was planning a genocide. I thought that I was doing the right thing.”

Foreman leaned back and folded his arms. “That’s not how Cameron saw it.”

Chase glared at him for a moment, then turned to me. “Game’s over. Excuse me, I need some air.” He stalked off and out of the bar, back rigid with distress.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Taub said sincerely.

Foreman shook his head. “Guess I shouldn’t have said that. I thought he was over her.”

“You’re an idiot,” Taub told him. “He’s done nothing but try to get over her ever since she left.”

“Let’s go back to the part where one of my employees _murdered a patient_ ,” I said impatiently. “Did I know about this?”

“Not at first,” Foreman admitted. “Chase was on his own. When I realized what he’d done, I tried to help him cover it up. But then we found a discrepancy in the results that Chase had faked, compared to the patient’s records. We didn’t know what to do.” He raised guilty eyes. “Somehow you figured it out and found a solution. You totally saved our asses.”

“Not for the first time,” Chase said, having reappeared quietly beside my shoulder.

Foreman nodded. “We’ve all made mistakes. You told me once that the only thing to do is go home, have a few drinks, sleep, then come back and do it all again, only better.”

“I must have had a lot of practice.” I tried to say it lightly, but the parade of revelations had left me shaken. These were the memories that I was trying to regain? This was the man I would one day be again?

“Sure,” Chase said serenely. “You’ve never shied away from attempting the impossible. When you fail, you’re bound to fail big. There’s a kind of greatness in that. It’s what I needed to learn from you.”

“You don’t care about following the rules,” Foreman said. “You’ve tried to do the right thing, no matter what the personal cost.”

“You believe that what we do matters,” Taub added.

Chase shot Foreman a meaningful glance, then laid his hand on my shoulder. “You lied to the transplant committee to save a bulimic patient who needed a new heart.”

Foreman half-smiled up at him and turned to me. “You spoke truth to power and almost lost your tenure when the Chairman of the Board asked you to pimp his drug company.”

“You risked your life to treat a patient with suspected smallpox,” Taub told me in a low voice.

I looked at each of them in turn, their eyes alight now with something resembling admiration.

“I don’t know,” I said, bewildered. “I can’t tell which one is the lie.”

“I said the game was over,” Chase reminded me.

“No lie,” said Foreman solemnly.

Chase’s fingers tightened on my shoulder, and the others nodded and raised their glasses.

***

“Am I a good man?”

Wilson and I were sitting at the table together, nursing a couple of beers after another delicious home-cooked meal. Foreman had dropped Chase off at his apartment before bringing me back to the loft, where I was greeted by the savory smell of chicken Florentine, heavy on the garlic. My joke about the power of the stinky rose to ward off unwelcome advances brought a slight smile to Wilson’s lips, but not his eyes. We ate in near-silence; I was preoccupied with the picaresque snippets of my recent history that had been offered by my fellows but unsure as to whether Wilson was, or should be, aware of some of them.

Wilson took a slow sip, choosing his words carefully. “You were… a difficult man. Even when we met, you were… challenging. But the infarction, and the drugs… they changed you. There were some tough times.” I could tell from the shadow that had fallen over his features that this was an enormous understatement on his part, that he was suppressing recollections of distance, hurt, and disappointment with considerable effort. He leaned forward with an earnest expression. “But despite all that… yes. I believe that deep down, you were a good man. A heroic one, even, in your own way. But… convincingly disguised.”

“Somehow I don’t exactly get the impression that I’ve been mild-mannered reporter by day, Man of Steel by night.”

“No… but substitute “arrogant asshole” for the first part and you might just about have it right.” This time the smile did touch his eyes. We nursed our beers in silence for a moment.

A new thought occurred to me. “Have I ever been married?”

Wilson tensed up and took a deep breath before looking me earnestly in the eye. “You lived with a woman for five years. Stacy Adler. Warner, now – she’s married. You’re not in touch anymore.”

The name sounded familiar, although I couldn’t place it immediately. “Well? Tell me about her.”

“Um. She was… striking, in every sense of the word. Smart, gorgeous, passionate, and never pulled any punches. You adored her.”

 _I adored her._ I waited for even the faintest stir of memory, a flash of emotion, a scent, a voice, but there was nothing. I shook my head. “I can’t…” Wilson waited, sympathetic eyes fixed on my face. “What happened?”

Another deep breath. I could tell that Wilson was thinking, weighing how much to unload on me all at once. “You’ve read the notes in your records about the infarction.”

“Yeah.” I suddenly remembered where I’d seen the name before. “She authorized the surgery to remove the necrotic tissue.”

“Yeah. While you were unconscious.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, although I had a terrible feeling that just maybe I did. “I wasn’t able to make my own decisions?”

“You did make your own decision,” Wilson admitted, looking down. “You were adamantly against amputation. You wanted the surgeon to bypass the muscle instead.”

I cocked my head. “That’s incredibly risky,” I said. “I could have recovered full use of the leg, sure, but from what you’ve told me, I had a much higher chance of dying of kidney failure from the rhabdo.”

“That’s what your doctors said. Stacy thought that you were throwing your life away. She went with the middle ground, removing the dead muscle.”

“That was the most reasonable course of action.”

To my surprise, Wilson chuckled painfully. “Reasonable courses of action and the middle ground were never really your style.”

“So she went against my wishes in order to save my life?”

“That was how she saw it. But she was sure you’d never forgive her for it. And she was right.”

“I left her?”

“Not exactly,” Wilson said quietly. His face looked younger somehow, features sharpened and vulnerable in the low light. “You don’t… leave people. But you’re very, very good at getting them to go away.”

“And yet,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, “I don’t seem to have managed to get rid of you.”

“No,” he agreed, noticeably failing to match my nonchalance. “Not for long, anyway.” He pushed his chair back and headed for the kitchen to rummage in the fridge. “Want another beer?”

“Sure,” I said, my mind working furiously. Everything Wilson had told me was just one more tantalizing hint, one brief glimpse into an entire lifetime that could have belonged to a man I’d never met for all the resonance it held for me. Trying to piece the bits together was both exhausting and perplexing. And even if I did, would I ever truly regain the identity I had lost? Or would I spend the rest of my life more or less successfully playing a part?

Wilson came back and handed me an open bottle, cold and sweating. He was looking rather clammy himself. This couldn’t be easy for him, reliving what must have been one of the rougher patches of our relationship. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, and laughed, probably more harshly than he’d intended. “God, I can’t believe that you’re the one who keeps asking _me_ that.”

I shrugged and spread my hands. “Maybe it should bother me more. But it still doesn’t feel _real_ to me somehow.”

“I know,” he said. “I just can’t…” Pause. “I think of that surgery as the defining event of your adult life. You never forgot it for a moment, never let anyone else forget it either. Everything that’s happened since flowed from that, somehow. It’s just so hard to believe that you can’t even remember it anymore.”

“I must have been scared, and angry, and in a lot of pain,” I mused.

Wilson laughed again, half-hysterically. “A lot of… House, you were a holy terror. You were always such an active man. An athlete - fast, strong. You took your body for granted until, without any warning, it betrayed you.” I wondered whether Wilson knew how his face had softened when he recalled my younger self. The thought quickened my pulse. “You weren’t just physically handicapped; you were permanently disfigured, in constant pain, and bitter as hell. You blamed your doctors for not diagnosing your condition earlier, Stacy for choosing the safer course…”

“And you?” I asked as he paused, swallowing. ”What did I blame you for?”

“Nothing,” he said. “And everything. For not being there to defend your wishes when you were under the knife. For being there to take care of you when Stacy left. For dispensing the pills that you needed to manage your pain. For trying to push you beyond your dependence on them. For seeing you at your worst and refusing to put you out of your misery.”

I said slowly, “Taub said something today about me forging your signature on some prescriptions, and stealing drugs from one of your patients.”

“Taub told you that?” he frowned. “Yeah. That was years later, though.”

“If I’d needed the drugs, I could have found some other way to get them,” I surmised.

Wilson hesitated, then nodded.

“I was trying to punish you, wasn’t I?”

He looked away, then back at me, and I felt my throat tighten at the faint echo of anguish in his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I put a hand out, but he flinched away from my touch.

“How can you be sorry?” he asked, and I knew exactly what he meant. How can anyone be sorry for something that, as far as he is concerned, he never actually did?

***

The following day, after my entire team struck out with candidates for our next case, I went out on the balcony and tossed tiny pieces of gravel at Wilson's office door until he joined me, looking uneasily behind him. "Will this take long? I have a patient."

"Well, I have questions, and I'm out of patients."

Wilson raised his eyes heavenwards at the pun and turned to go, but I continued, "I need to know about my family."

He stiffened and turned back to face me. "What, right now?"

"You tell me. Are they going to wonder that they haven't heard from me in a while?"

"I doubt it," Wilson said, squinting off into the greenery. "But all right. What did you want to know?"

"Well, let's start with the basics. Do I still have parents? Siblings?"

“You’re an only child.” Wilson paused and walked over to brace his hands on the edge of the balcony wall before adding, “Your dad is dead.”

“Oh.” Another part of my past that it might be too late to regain. I limped the two steps to join him and attempted unsuccessfully to catch his eye. “Were we close?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied in the vague tone that I’d come to identify as Wilsonspeak for don’t-ask-don’t-tell. “We went to his funeral together, and you delivered… rather an unusual eulogy.”

“And my mom?”

“She’s in Kentucky. You’re on reasonably good terms, I think, but you don’t talk all that often.”

“But you’ve met my parents?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have any photos of them, any letters, nothing. What are… what were they like?”

“Your mom has never been anything but gracious,” Wilson allowed.

“And my dad?”

“Honestly? I think that if you could have erased your father from existence, you might have.”

“We were too different?”

“Yes,” Wilson said. “And too much the same.” At last he turned to face me, the bleakness in his eyes speaking volumes. “From what I understand, he had very high expectations, and he… wasn’t kind to those who failed to meet them.”

“Did he beat me?” I asked in a low voice.

Wilson sighed. “I really couldn’t say. But my impression was that his methods were more… subtle.” He raised his hand to rub the back of his neck. “House, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that you have, shall we say, a problem with authority. I can’t help but think that it can be traced back to that.”

For some reason I felt a sudden compulsion to defend the man who couldn’t speak up on his own behalf. “But… what if I was a rotten kid? What if I was a hellion who needed it – whatever combination of love and discipline he used to civilize me? What if I would have turned out even worse without him?”

Wilson’s eyes were dark. “Based on what little I’ve heard, I don’t think that’s very likely,” he said soberly. “But if I see any signs that your memory loss has transformed you into a sociopath, I’ll be sure to take the proper precautions.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “You haven’t developed a sudden taste for fava beans and a nice Chianti?”

 


	4. Coming Together

**Chapter 4: Coming Together**   
_  
“Come at once if convenient — if inconvenient come all the same.”   
_

  

“Wilson,” I said the following night after clearing away the dinner dishes, “There was something else in my medical file that I needed to ask you about.”

“Okay,” Wilson said with a slight frown, sitting forward on the sofa.

“In May of 2008, I was admitted with a concussion sustained in a vehicular accident. The notes say that there was transient memory loss, and there’s an MRI showing a longitudinal fracture of the temporal bone. Do you know anything about that?”

Wilson had paled. “Yes, I remember,” he said heavily. “The file’s correct. But I doubt that your current condition has anything to do with that incident.”

“That’s what I figured. But it was what happened afterwards that’s been bothering me.” I paused, pinning him with my gaze. “Apparently I also suffered cardiac arrest induced by an overdose of physostigmine and later had a seizure during deep brain stimulation. Now, why would my physician… that would be _you_ … have allowed me to take physostigmine and undergo DBS after being diagnosed with a skull fracture?

Wilson looked away. “Well, first of all, the idea that I ‘let’ you do much of anything would seem pretty ludicrous if you knew anything about our history.”

I raised an eyebrow but let that pass. “Okay. Then why would _I_ have decided to do those things, knowing the risks that they posed?”

“A lot of people were injured in that bus accident,” Wilson said. “You were… obsessed with the idea that you had noticed something important just before it happened, and that someone was going to die because you couldn’t remember. You tried hypnosis first. When that didn’t give you the answers you needed, you got your hands on some physostigmine and convinced your colleagues to reenact the night of the accident so you could try to regain some contextual memories.” He rubbed his eyes, bringing his fingers together to pinch the bridge of his nose.

I found this fascinating. “ _Cool._ So did it work?”

“Yeah,” he replied, so softly that I could barely hear him. He cleared his throat. “You figured out that one of the unidentified victims was my girlfriend, Amber Volakis.”

I waited until he had regained some measure of control before asking, “So was she the one I was trying to save?”

“Yeah. Her leg injury had been repaired, but she had tachycardia and kidney damage that no one could explain. We had her moved to the ICU at PPTH and put her in protective hypothermia and on bypass while you tried to figure out what had happened.”

“And so you let me volunteer to undergo DBS in an effort to recover any remaining clues to diagnose her.”

“Yeah,” Wilson said. He looked up at me, his features twisted in contrition and recollected grief. “In the end, it didn’t make a difference. She’d taken some amantadine just before the crash, and she was dying. So you risked your life for nothing. I could have lost you both.”

“You couldn’t have known that would be the case when I offered to try,” I told him.

“It’s even worse than that,” Wilson said with a shudder. “You didn’t offer. I _asked_ you to do it. Knowing how dangerous it would be for you.” He couldn’t even look at me. “I knew that, and… I never admitted how unfair it was to ask you to do something like that for me. I was angry. At losing her, at…” He bowed his head.

There was still something bothering me about this story, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and anyway, I was moved by his evident distress. “Wilson. It’s all right. You loved her.” He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. “You were trying to save her. Anyone would have done the same. And I could have said no.”

At this, he pulled his head up sharply, although he didn’t say anything. “You heard me, I could have said no. Obviously I had my own reasons.” I caught his eye, tried to coax a smile. “Hey. She must have been someone pretty special.”

“She was,” Wilson said simply.

“Wish I could remember her. What was she like?”

“Smart. Outspoken. Ambitious. She was… so much fun, and so confident most of the time. She knew how to get what she wanted, and she’d do whatever was necessary. Your nickname for her was Cutthroat Bitch.” This last was said without any rancor, but I found myself wincing.

“I guess we didn’t get along that well, then,” I made a half-hearted attempt at a joke.

“Actually, I think that on some level, you liked her a lot. You were just too busy being…” He stopped, biting his lip.

“Jealous?” I hazarded a guess. He just looked at me, and I allowed my mouth to quirk in a grin. “Oh come on, Wilson. Of course I was jealous. A funny, nice, good-lookin’ guy like you in my life and suddenly I’m competing for your attentions with some hot young thing?”

It was Wilson’s turn to wince. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what? Compliment you? Or shoot my mouth off on stuff I know nothing about?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Mostly the compliments. It’s just… too weird, hearing them from you.”

“Because I’m a dude?”

“More because you’re, you know, _you_.”

“You know,” I said, suddenly struck by something, “has it occurred to you that your description of Amber sounds… a little like your description of me?”

He opened his mouth, closed it with a frown. “Funny that you should mention that,” he said slowly.

“Yeah, well, probably not so surprising. Opposites attract, et cetera,” I shrugged, and levered myself up off the sofa, shuffling over to the kitchen to get us a couple of beers.

When I returned, Wilson was still sitting there in the same position; he looked like he was having some pretty intense thoughts, but he accepted the bottle from me and took a long swig, then another. “Wilson? You okay? Sorry if my curiosity opened up a big ol’ can of worms-“

“House…” he said hesitantly, with the air of a man who’d just come to a momentous and potentially terrifying decision.

“Yeah?”

“The other day when you…” he swallowed, unable to meet my eyes, and upended his bottle, draining the rest of the beer.

“Tried to kiss you on the couch?” I guessed. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and tucked his chin in a bashful nod. “Yeah, sorry about that. It was an honest mistake.”

“No, I… what I wanted to know is, did you do that… because you thought that I expected you to?”

He looked up at me then, his brown eyes dark with fear and open need, and I immediately intuited his real question: was I just trying to play my part, or had I actually been acting on my own impulses, on real feeling? Instead of answering in words, I set my bottle down on the coffee table and took a shaky step forward, dropping the cane. Wilson stood to meet me, and his own empty beer bottle thudded to the rug and rolled a few inches off.

This time he didn’t jerk away as I leaned in, my mouth finding his even as he groaned and grabbed my biceps to bring me closer. His tongue was cool and bitter-tasting after the beer, but I could feel the heat in his hands, and lower down. I brushed back his soft flop of hair with one hand and cupped the hinge of his jaw with the other, feeling the faintest prickle of five-o-clock shadow under my palm.

I might not have had anything to compare this to, but I was fairly certain after just a few seconds that Wilson was a pretty fucking fantastic kisser: firm yet gentle, not sloppily wet, not prissily dry. I wondered what other surprises awaited me underneath that staid exterior.

Without breaking the kiss, I began by loosening his tie, feeling my arousal mount as the silk slithered through my fingers. Despite my excitement, my hands were steady as I unbuttoned his pastel shirt and pulled it out of the confines of his slacks. He shuddered as I ran my palms up the smooth planes of his back.

Underneath the starched shirt Wilson was rigid, almost vibrating with tension. I pulled the sides of the open shirt away from his neck, slid one hand inside to knead his trapezius while trailing kisses down the opposite side from his ear to the point of his shoulder. “Wilson,” I murmured, dragging my mouth away from his neck for a moment. “Just relax.”

“What person who is nothing like me are you saying that to?” he retorted. Smirking, I pulled back and caught his eye, holding it until his glower dissolved into a shy grin and his shoulders sagged.

“That’s better,” I nodded, leaning in again to nip at his throat just under his jawline. Wilson tried not to twist away, trembling under my touch.

“I’m not going have beard burn, am I?”

“If you do, it will have been worth it,” I assured him, more confidently than I felt.

I moved downward between his clavicles and briefly rubbed my face against his chest, letting the wiry hairs brush against my closed eyelids, then experimentally tongued a nipple; Wilson jerked against me with a sudden sharp intake of breath. Encouraged, I spiraled outward, then back, and reached down to press him through his slacks with the heel of my hand for good measure as I sucked gently. “ _God_ ,” he groaned, involuntarily bucking back against me.

I was surprised to see that Wilson had a long scar forking over the upper right quadrant, most likely a memento of relatively recent liver surgery. The skin on his belly was pale, almost fragile, and incredibly soft. I wrapped my other hand around his waist for balance and peppered it with kisses, amused and emboldened by the way Wilson had started to thrust his hips impatiently upward, pressing his hard, hot length against my palm through the wool. Abruptly he reached down to grasp the sides of my head and urge me upwards for a kiss while he fumbled for his fly.

I broke it off, a little nervous myself now. “Are you sure you’re ready for-“

“House,” he growled against my mouth, grappling with my belt buckle. “Twenty - _fucking_ \- years.”

A few seconds later, and we had both been sprung free. There was just one problem: my thigh was starting to throb and threatening to give way. “Wilson,” I groaned, “do you think we could move this to the bedroom?”

He immediately dropped what he was doing, his kind face creasing with worry. “Is it the leg?”

“Yeah. It’s all right, just too much standing.”

Wilson wrapped his left arm around my waist and pulled my right around his shoulders; we used our free hands to hold up our pants. I bet we managed some kind of record for the three-legged race. The reward for crossing the finish line was an undignified collapse on Wilson’s bed.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the next step should be, but Wilson solved this by hauling himself up to the head of the bed and shimmying out of his slacks and shorts, which he folded and placed beside him on the bedside table. I followed suit, letting mine fall to the floor, then rolled back and stuck my tongue in his mouth, reaching down to squeeze his ass.

“House, are you…?”

“Just inspecting the merchandise,” I told him with a sly grin, and glanced down between us. “And a nice package it is, too! Jimmy, you’ve been holding out on me.” I could see Wilson starting to look slightly dazed, as though the sight of our bare cocks in such proximity was causing him to rethink his position, so I stopped teasing him and pulled him close for another kiss.

A second later I could feel him, slick and hot, sliding against me, and shifted myself for a better angle, then thrust my fingers further down to massage his perineum. He gasped, “Oh, _god_ , yeah,” and hooked his leg over my hip, allowing me to cup his balls while we continued to grind against each other. Something about the timbre of Wilson’s voice, the sharp scent of his skin, would have had me painfully hard even without the delicious friction, and I knew that I wasn’t going to last all that long. I could feel the pressure building in my pelvis, and my balls felt like lead.

Suddenly Wilson whimpered and grabbed my bicep so hard I was sure I’d have a bruise. I could feel his nuts contracting in my hand as he spasmed and spurted, rocking reflexively against me. I quickly reached down and grabbed myself, finishing off with a few quick, sure strokes that left me groaning into Wilson’s mouth. Warmth flooded through me, tingling in my toes and fingertips, as Wilson reluctantly withdrew his leg and rested his forehead against my chest.

“Are you _sure_ we’ve never done this before?” I had to ask afterwards, propping my head on a doubled pillow and rubbing the ridges of his ribs appreciatively under my palm.

“Trust me,” Wilson murmured, “I would have remembered if we had.” But his chest started shaking under my arm, and then we were both laughing, giddy with the surprise and pleasure and ridiculousness of it all.

“Wilson,” I said finally when we’d both quieted down, “have I always been this… fast?”

He looked instantly apologetic. “Technically, I-“

“No, not that, you idiot. I mean, do I always… fall into bed and move in with someone I like so soon after meeting them?”

His lip curled slightly as he considered this. “Actually, yes. Good thing you don’t like very many people.” I launched a pillow at him, which he ducked adroitly with a chuckle. I could tell that he was kind of kidding, but kind of not.

Wilson got up to go to the bathroom, bringing back a couple of warm, damp washcloths. After we’d cleaned up a bit, we slid under the sheets and lay silent for a moment before Wilson spoke quietly, staring at the ceiling. “I should talk. I’ve always fallen into relationships so quickly, I never really had a chance to worry about whether or not they would work out. This time… my god, House, I know all your flaws and eccentricities, we’ve taken all kinds of crap from each other over the years, and yet I still wanted to be with you.” He shook his head, speaking less to me than to himself. “I can’t believe that I finally made that leap.”

I said nothing, feeling suddenly envious, and a little ashamed. For Wilson, this had been the culmination of half a lifetime of friendship and unacknowledged attraction, while for me, it was the work of what seemed like a whim.

“So… was it everything you’d hoped for?” I asked at last, allowing sarcasm to mask my discomfort.

“For a first time? Better,” Wilson murmured. “You were… how should I say this? Unexpectedly attentive. I’m used to being the one giving my partner pleasure. I figured that especially in this case, it’d be my job to man up.”

“What, you expected me to be selfish in bed?” I was sincerely surprised by this. “What possible reason would you have to think that?”

“Oh, only just about every interaction we’ve ever had.” He said it sleepily, obviously just joshing me and unconcerned by the implications, and a few seconds later his breathing evened out. I, on the other hand, remained awake for a long time.

***

Wilson sleeps like a log. That’s probably something I would have known already if I could remember anything about him from more than a week ago. And it’s not the only annoyingly woody thing about sharing a bed with him.

I woke up that first morning aching in every joint and muscle, feeling pretty much exactly like I should have expected after unaccustomed sex at the advanced age of fifty-one. We’d been too busy to close the blinds the night before, and the full morning sun fell on my face with all the subtlety of a hammer and anvil. And behind me, just as unsubtly, Wilson was nuzzling my neck and rubbing his rigid roger between my buttocks.

I groaned, pulling the pillow over my head and curling my knees towards my chest. “Gah. What the hell time izzit?”

“Rise and shine,” Wilson whispered winningly in my ear, having so clearly managed both things effortlessly himself.

 _“_ Jesus, Wilson, is this why all three of your wives left you? _Fuck off already.”_

Wilson withdrew, deflated, and fell silent. After a few seconds of this, I rolled over and wrenched one eye open. “The hell. Is wrong with you?”

He was staring straight up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, and looking deeply embarrassed. “I knew it. Last night was a mistake. You wish it hadn’t happened.”

I rolled my eyes, propped myself up on my elbow, and glared down at him. “You’re an idiot. I have no regrets about last night. And the only thing I _wish_ is that I’d gotten about a quart of coffee into my system before we started having this conversation.”

Wilson didn’t move, except for his eyes, which flicked cautiously over to focus on my face. I sighed. “ _Wilson_. I’m sore, and I didn’t sleep much. I’m just a cranky bastard in serious need of painkillers and caffeine. You have nothing to worry about. Okay?”

He didn’t look convinced. “It’s just, I can’t help thinking… There were so many opportunities. Why now? Why did this take so long? What if the things you… you _knew_ about me kept you from…” Wilson turned abruptly away, curling into himself.

I knew exactly what he was asking. What if, when I regained my memories, I could no longer look at him in the same way? What if I decided that this was all a terrible mistake?

“Wilson,” I said helplessly. “You can’t assume that. It could have been anything. Did you ever even tell me that you… Can you be sure that I knew?”

His voice was muffled. “We’ve only ever joked about it. But you notice _everything_. How could you not have known?”

I reached tentatively for his shoulder, curled my fingers around it. “If there’s one thing that I know now, it’s that experiences and assumptions shape our perspectives, and with them our perceptions.”

“That just means that if you didn’t know before, it’s because you didn’t _want_ to know. So why would that be?”

“Who the hell knows why? Maybe my dad put ice cubes on my pee-pee when I started talking about the cute boys in my class.”

Wilson finally turned back and blinked at me. “Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t have put it past him.”

***

About a week later, I’d convened my team in the Diagnostics conference room to confer about our latest patient.

“Mr. Mehta hasn’t been responding to the steroids and-“

Masters paused mid-sentence and frowned, her eyes fixed just below my jawline. “Dr. House, is that a- _oww_!” She turned and glared at Foreman, whose face was set in a determinedly bland expression.

“Sorry,” he said. “Foot slipped.”

I waggled my eyebrows at her in high good humor. “What is it, Sweet Sixteen and never been kissed? Haven’t you ever seen a hickey before?”

“But does this mean-“ she began.

“Dr. _Wilson_ ,” Chase said loudly, looking towards the door. He gestured towards his own neck. “You’ve got something on your… yeah.”

Masters looked from me to Wilson, then sat back and folded her arms. “You _knew?_ ” she said to no one in particular.

“He’s been singing,” Foreman shrugged.

“Always a sure sign,” Chase added.

Taub only sat there and smirked.

“House,” Wilson said, avoiding all of our eyes in obvious embarrassment, “I just wanted to remind you that we have our weekly department heads meeting at ten.” He left hastily, almost walking into the glass door on his way out.

“Hear that?” I said to Masters. “You’re gonna have to make this snappy. If it isn’t autoimmune, then what’s our next best bet?”

***

“Wilson, why’d the Dean look so… shell-shocked when we walked into the meeting this morning?”

Wilson didn’t stop chowing down his lo mein as he said steadily, “Well, that was the first department heads meeting that you’d bothered to attend in several years.”

I paused mid-chew, half-choked, and started coughing. “ _Seriously?_ Why didn’t she fire my ass a long time ago?”

“A question many have pondered but none have answered to my satisfaction,” Wilson replied.

“Very funny. What, did she have the hots for me or something?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he said sarcastically. “Either that, or she recognized the fact that she had hired the finest diagnostician in the country and was willing to overlook a few eccentricities.”

“I think you mean felonies.”

Wilson shrugged. “You were never convicted.”

“That’s so reassuring.” I finished off the last of my kung pao chicken, washing it down with a swig of beer. “Wilson?” He looked quizzically at me from under his eyebrows. “There’s something else going on with Cuddy. She didn’t just look surprised. She seemed… sad. Even more so than usual.”

“Yeah.” I could feel him tense up where our knees touched. “She hasn’t been…” he took a deep breath. “She was in an accident earlier this year. Her two-year-old daughter was killed.”

I stared at him. “Jesus, that’s terrible.”

“It really was. She had tried for years to get pregnant, and then to adopt, before she finally was able to become a foster mom for Rachel. And then that was kind of rough for a while. I think she was just starting to feel like her life was…” he swallowed and looked down, “stable, when it happened.”

“Are you close?” I asked. He seemed much more emotionally involved than I would have expected if she had just been his employer, even over many years.

Wilson made a visible effort to shake it off. “Not so much in the past few years, to tell you the truth.” He looked at me sidelong. “She was considering me as a sperm donor at one point.”

I almost choked on my beer, set it down and wiped my mouth. “Oh _really_ , is that what they call it these days.”

“I’m sure it all would have been completely businesslike,” Wilson deadpanned. “Cuddy waiting in the next room with her legs spread, me with a cup and a copy of Sports Illustrated.”

“Swimsuit issue?”

“Believe what you want,” Wilson said in a low voice, leaning over and kissing me just under the jaw so that I shivered, shutting my eyes. “But lately I’m finding that I’m more of a shoulder man.” He grasped my deltoid in illustration, squeezing it gently as he moved in on my mouth. I could feel his weight shift on the sofa, the brush of his thigh against mine. When I looked up at him again, he was straddling me and starting to pull my t-shirt out of my pants.

“Anyone ever tell you that you get turned on by the weirdest things?”

“Anyone ever tell you that you really don’t know when to shut up?”

“I’m guessing lots of times,” I answered honestly, then sucked in a breath as Wilson started stroking me through the fabric. Hearing that, he smiled, briefly nuzzled my neck, and began unbuttoning my fly. “Wuh- wait, shouldn’t we take this to the bedroom?”

“You okay? Leg hurting?”

“No, fine, but-“

“Then this is good,” he assured me, kissing me one last time on the mouth before going south.

“Have you ever even-“

“Shush. I mean it. Besides, how hard could it be?”

“Plenty ha-aaahhh,” I gasped as Wilson’s warm lips closed over the head of my cock. He nudged my thighs apart, careful of my scar, and planted his left elbow between them for leverage as he encircled me with soft fingers. Wrapping his right arm around my waist, he began caressing the small of my back. Groaning, I fought to keep my hips from rocking up with every swirl of his tongue.

It was difficult to believe that Wilson didn’t know his way around a dick, but maybe it was just his natural gift for discerning what other people wanted from him and giving it to them. I tangled my fingers in his hair, guiding his rhythm ever so subtly as my pleasure mounted. By the time I’d collapsed on the couch, shuddering and soaked with sweat, and Wilson had rubbed his sore knees and clambered up beside me, I had completely forgotten what we’d been talking about.

***

The sight of Dean Cuddy speaking to the nurse on duty in the clinic the next morning served as a harsh reminder. On impulse, I intercepted her on her way back to her office.

“Dr. Cuddy…”

She looked up at me reluctantly, an eternity of weariness and loss etched in every feature. “What is it, House?”

“I just wanted to say again how sorry I am about Rachel.”

She bit her lip sharply, blue eyes suddenly filling with tears. “I know,” she managed after a moment, patting my arm and struggling for a small smile. “But it isn’t enough.”

I nodded brusquely and backed away, suddenly feeling like an obscenely clumsy oaf. Obviously she’d been the recipient of useless expressions of sympathy for months, but grief is such a private thing, and grief for a child doubly so. I didn’t even know what it felt like to be a parent, much less to have loved and lost so absolutely.

***

Despite Wilson’s best efforts, I found myself distracted that night. My encounter with Cuddy had unsettled me more than I cared to admit. I couldn’t shake the sense that I was missing something, some critical clue that would clarify our unorthodox arrangement, her unease around me, the astonishing antagonism of the duty nurse that first morning.

Then again, perhaps it was just a reaction to my own dangerous impulses, which so could easily have led to disaster. I couldn’t afford such intimate encounters with the Dean if I expected to keep my mental status a secret from her. I would never know when I was on the verge of tripping over some key component of my history and tumbling into the abyss. And although it had now been almost two weeks, my memories had shown no signs of returning.

I grumbled to Wilson about this once he had despaired of lifting my spirits and settled down for the night, snuggling up against my side with a sigh of resignation.

“You know,” he said sleepily, “some people would say you were lucky. It’s very rare to get the opportunity to reboot your life. To start over with a clean slate.”

“This isn’t a _do-over_ , Wilson. I’m still over fifty fucking years old, and whatever I’ve done, I’ve done, and everyone else remembers it even if I don’t.”

“I know that,” he replied patiently, “but think about it. You don’t have to be weighed down by the burden of remorse, remembering the mistakes you’ve made or the might-have-beens. Even better, you don’t have to bear any grudges.”

I stiffened beside him but tried to keep my tone light as I said, “I’ve been getting the impression that I might have been a real champion in that regard.”

Wilson only wrapped his arms around me more securely. “I’m pretty sure you have a whole shelf full of trophies someplace in the basement,” he mumbled against the back of my neck.

 

 


	5. Admissions

**Chapter 5: Admissions**   
_  
“What one man can invent another can discover.”   
_

 

“Tell me how you want it,” I encouraged him. We were lying in my bed, which I had decided was the perfect spot for late-afternoon weekend sex, the spring sunlight filtering in to warm Wilson’s skin to pale pink and gild the fine hairs along his shoulders.

Wilson tried to roll his eyes, but had to stop when his breath hitched as my thumb rubbed over the slick head of his cock. “What, now you’re trying to get me to talk dirty so you can mock me?”

“I am _trying_ ,” I emphasized, “to get you in the habit of telling me what you want.” We locked eyes, challenging each other. “You’re always so goddamned concerned about what other people think, what they need from you. What about you?”

“I’ve got no complaints,” Wilson retorted, then flinched as I flicked him with my fingernail.

“That’s what I’m talking about! _Have_ complaints. And while you’re at it, have huge insatiable desires for things that others may or may not be able to give you.”

“That makes no sense,” he scowled.

“Trust me, it does,” I said, and leaned in for a long kiss that sparked an electric current streaming down to my dick. “Come on, Wilson,” I murmured in his ear, closing my hand around his cock for good measure. “Don’t think, just answer. What do you _want?_ ”

“ _House_ ,” he groaned, “I want you inside me.” Immediately he froze. “Wow,” he said after a few seconds, “ _that’s_ something I never expected to hear myself say.”

I grinned, kept stroking the smooth, silky length of him. “We can try it if you want. Might have to get a little creative because of the leg. I take it this would be your first time? Any of your wives ever strap on mommy’s little helper and have a go?”

“No,” he said, thick brows furrowing in a frown. “Although Amber did bring up the idea once. We… never got the chance to give it a try.” He blinked rapidly as if trying to dispel that thought, then turned his head to look up at me. “You?”

“No fucking idea,” I admitted. “But we’ll figure it out.” I backed off for a few seconds, considering heights, weight ratios, angles, and our likely mutual lack of experience. “We’ll start small,” I decided at last. “Face away from me.” I pushed him gently onto his side and squirted a generous amount of lube onto my index finger.

Wilson shivered at my touch. “Too cold?”

“No,” he gasped. “Keep going.” I lay down, spooning him, knowing that he would still be within easy reach of my right arm. I circled around the topic for a bit, then eased one finger inside. Wilson tensed up for a second, then relaxed and settled back against me with a sigh, allowing me to sink in to the second knuckle. My dick twitched against my inner thigh, probably in envy.

I murmured against the back of Wilson’s neck, “I’m going to try another one,” then pushed myself up on my elbow so I could see his face, mouth slightly open in wonder. He nodded dazedly, eyes squeezed shut. I pulled out, slicked on a little more lube, tickled him a bit before slowly sliding two fingers inside. More resistance this time; Wilson gave a little moan and reached back, grabbing my bicep. I froze. “Too much?”

“House,” he whimpered, “I will fucking _kill_ you if you stop now.”

“Whoever thought that death threats from you would be a turn-on?” I teased him.

“If I’d known,” he ground out, “I wouldn’t have missed so many opportunities to- _oh_ ,” and he curled back insistently into my hand.

By now I was achingly hard, my excitement notching up into impatience. “You ready to try this?”

“If I were any closer, I’d be in back of you.”

“What does that even mean?” I snorted, but I obediently eased out, depositing a careless kiss on his collarbone.

Wilson rolled halfway over, eyeing me. “How will you-“

“Not so many options,” I said curtly. “You’ll be on top.” I tore open a condom packet, sheathed up, and lay back on the bed, my heart pounding. “Here,” I said, tossing Wilson the lube. “Try not to get too rough.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be very careful with little Greg.”

I glared up at him. “Little Greg, _really?_ ”

“What, you think I spend my time coming up with pet names for _your_ penis? That’s what you’ve always called it.”

“Okay, first, I’m sure that I would have come up with something _way_ more creative, and second, how the hell do you know that?”

Wilson rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you kept it a secret.” As I opened my mouth to protest, he leaned in and kissed me slowly, deeply, then sat back on his heels.

“Do you think you’re hard enough?”

“That,” I assured him, “is not gonna be a problem.”

Wilson gave me a slow, warm smile that went straight to my cock, squirted some lube onto his palm and smoothed it onto me, putting his wrist into it so that each stroke swirled maddeningly up and off. Then he carefully arced one leg over my hips and hovered there for a second, straddling me. “You’re sure about this?”

“You pick a hell of a time to ask,” I sneered, just before he lowered himself onto me and I heard myself cry out with the inconceivably tight, pure pleasure of it. Wilson’s mouth fell open, and his eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, but he kept sliding down until his balls brushed against my belly. Then he paused, planted his palms on my chest, and took a deep breath. “You okay?” I asked, trying not to sound as anxious as I felt.

Wilson looked straight down into my eyes with an expression I had never expected to see on anyone’s face. “Perfect,” he said. “But please don’t make me laugh, I might break something.”

“Go on, Jimmy,” I challenged him, awash in heat and something suspiciously resembling happiness. “Push it ‘til it breaks.”

Wilson blinked, braced himself, then rose and sank, thighs quivering a little with the strain. He managed to draw quiet moans out of me both coming and going. Again, faster now that he was getting the hang of the angle and gravity. Dimly I could feel the tension in his calves clamped against my hips and thighs, but I was fixated on two points, the hot sweetness that enclosed me almost painfully and the astonished, intent face above mine, the dark eyes deep enough to drown in. The tip of his tongue emerged from his mouth, and sweat began to bead on his forehead.

A few more rounds of that, and I knew I was near the edge. “Wilson,” I whispered, grabbing his wrist, and then I was bucking under him, and he started stroking himself, putting all of his weight on one hand, and I think that both of us were yelling at the end, but it was difficult to be entirely sure.

When I opened my eyes again, I was still flat on my back, but Wilson was lying against me, arm around my waist, his damp hair tickling my armpit. What I could see of his face wore such a blissed-out expression that I could feel the mockery bubbling to my lips. But I swallowed it and instead reached up to wrap my fingers around his limp wrist, stroking the prominent veins softly with my thumb.

***

It started the evening that I was helping Wilson with his balls. Had to; they were smoking, and I didn’t want them to set off our fire alarm. Anyway, I pulled them away from the flames just in time, but something about the rich, almost sweet smell of the charred meat mixed with oregano gave me pause. I frowned, trying to figure out where the feeling of déjà vu was coming from.

“Did we ever take a cooking class together?”

Next to me, Wilson’s eyes widened. “You _remember_ that?”

“Were we wearing these same gay matching blue aprons?” Wilson nodded. “Then, yes.”

“That was right after you got out of rehab. You weren’t allowed back at work until you got your medical license reinstated, so I thought learning to cook might be a good distraction.”

“Did it work?”

Wilson started laughing. “Too well. You became totally obsessed.”

“Was I any good?”

He interlaced his fingers with mine and murmured against my neck, “Delicious.”

***

The following night, sitting on the sofa after dinner, I was uncharacteristically quiet. Wilson finally nudged me and asked whether anything was wrong.

“I had Foreman give me another exam today. We still don’t know what triggered the amnesia initially, but he thinks that my memories will continue to come back, a little at a time.”

“House. That’s great!” Wilson peered more closely into my face and frowned. “Isn’t it? What’s the problem?”

“Wilson, I…” I took a deep breath, placing my palm on his thigh for emphasis. “These past few weeks, despite everything, I… I’ve been _happy_.”

“Me too,” he said quickly, but I shook my head at him, scowling a little.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He covered my hand tentatively with his, and our fingers tangled together while he waited for me to continue. All day I’d been thinking about the bitter, broken man that I had been before, in contrast to the contentment I’d found more recently with my work, with Wilson. What if I could only be so sanguine about my past experiences because I couldn’t take them personally anymore – because they no longer felt real to me? If I regained my memories, would all that baggage weigh me down again despite my newfound happiness, my best intentions?

“What if I _can’t_ forgive?” I said, so softly that I half-hoped he hadn’t heard me. “What if I can only forget?”

Wilson slid an arm around the back of my shoulders and squeezed lightly, drawing me closer. His cheek was warm and damp against my own. “Let’s not worry about that until we have to.”

***

That night, the dreams began.

They were tattered fragments, most of them, mainly filled with faces I didn’t recognize. But there was one in particular that returned over and over again, more vividly each time.

 _I’m driving a bus filled with faceless passengers. It’s night. We’re approaching an empty intersection. Red changes to green. Then suddenly the world jerks sideways and there is far too much noise and light._

The first time, I woke to find myself sitting bolt upright in bed, my throat as hoarse as if I’d been shouting in my sleep.

Beside me, drooling on his pillow, Wilson half-opened one eye. “’kay?” he mumbled.

My heart was racing hard enough to make me feel dizzy, and my face and palms were slick with sweat. “Yeah,” I said, forcing myself to lie back down, willing my body to relax, my pulse to slow. “Bad dream.”

Wilson threw one arm clumsily across my chest as if determined to protect me, even in his sleep.

***

“I keep having this dream,” I said to Wilson on Sunday. He had managed to sleep in for a whole half hour before getting up to brew coffee and scramble eggs with prosciutto, fresh basil and mozzarella, and I had just dragged myself out of bed to join him, yawning after another restless night.

“It’s about an accident.” I just barely caught the sudden stiffening in his arm, but he kept pouring the coffee without looking at me and handed me my mug. “I’m driving a bus, it’s late at night, I can’t see the passengers. All of a sudden something slams into us from the side. There’s lights, sirens, a baby crying, a woman close by, screaming her head off. That’s when I wake up.”

“Maybe you feel… safe now. Maybe some of your more disturbing memories are starting to come back.”

“That’s what I was thinking. That I’ve been reliving the bus crash.”

“That would make sense,” Wilson said, sitting down across from me and taking a sip from his mug.

“I don’t know why I’d be driving, though.”

“It’s a dream, House,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t mean you were actually driving the bus. It could be… symbolic.”

“Thought of that, too.” I looked him right in the eye. “The most likely explanation is that, on some level, I feel responsible. Do you know of any reason why I would feel that way?”

Wilson looked down and speared some eggs with his fork, then tore off a piece of toast and buttered it. “It’s your head, House,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

I paused for a moment, debating. “Were you on the bus, Wilson?”

He swallowed. “What? No, why?”

“It’s been bothering me. If you weren’t with us, what were Amber and I both doing on the bus that night?”

Wilson pushed his plate away. I could see the tic starting in his temple and felt a twinge of remorse, but I had to know. “Wilson?”

“I was working,” he said heavily. “Amber went to pick you up.”

“On a bus? That makes no sense.”

“No, she drove, but you had called _me_ , and apparently you didn’t want to go home with her,” Wilson said, his hand swinging out in a gesture of frustration. “So while she was distracted by the bill, you got away from her and boarded the bus. And she… probably didn’t feel comfortable letting you ride home alone.”

“So… I was really wasted, is what you’re saying.”

“Isn’t your BAC in the ER report?” Wilson asked sharply, then bit his lip.

I stared at him, sensitive to the censure in his voice. “You blame me?”

“No,” he said quickly, and then sighed and rubbed his temples. “Not anymore.”

“So that’s it,” I said quietly, sitting back. “That’s why you asked. That’s why I felt compelled to figure it out.”

“Yes,” he said. “And no. You wanted to know what had happened. Before you even knew that she was on the bus.”

I shook my head. “I knew. I just didn’t remember.”

Wilson was starting to look distinctly twitchy. “Fine. All I’m saying is… you weren’t responsible. Yes, you called for a ride. Yes, she wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for you.” He leaned forward, staring at me intently, and for some reason I got the feeling that he meant much more than the words he was saying. “But you didn’t cause the accident. You didn’t kill her. It wasn’t fair to blame you. You did everything you could.”

“I couldn’t save her,” I said, staring at a distant point over his left shoulder, watching my vision blur. My throat was thickening. Something was wrong. This incident with Amber, while understandably upsetting, had happened years ago. I was responding to something else, something much more immediate and raw.

“You did everything you could,” Wilson repeated, reaching across the table to fold his warm fingers over mine.

I had to stifle a flinch. Something was still bothering me, threatening to bubble up from deep down. Something I had noticed in the most recent iteration of the dream, or something Wilson wasn’t saying. It was just there. So close. If I could just grab it, make it materialize out of thin air. “Did Amber have… dark hair?”

He hardly hesitated. “Yes.”

 _Wilson was lying._ I don’t know how I knew, but I was suddenly sure of it. I pushed my chair back and stood, pulling away from him. “House?”

“Don’t touch me.” I had to get away. I had to think.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” There was a note of panic now.

That was when it came to me. I turned around too quickly, stumbled a little, staggered painfully to my bedroom. Wilson came after me but got the door slammed in his face for his trouble. He started pounding on the door as I unlatched the lid of my laptop, waited for it to wake up. “ _House?_ What the hell?”

My wireless was working. I opened Firefox, pulled up the Princeton Packet, clicked on the Obituaries. It would have been about… what? Three months ago? Four?

“House, are you all right? Talk to me!” He banged more loudly, but I knew that he wasn’t about to do anything so reckless as break down the door, so I ignored him and continued to enter my search parameters. One last click.

 _“Rachel Cuddy, age two, passed away on February 27, 2011 at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital after sustaining severe injuries in an automobile accident. She is survived by her loving adoptive parents, Lisa Cuddy and Gregory House.”_

***

When I emerged, fully dressed, keys and wallet tucked into the pockets of my woolen winter coat, Wilson was facing the sink, shoulders slumped. The haunted look in his eyes when he turned his head did not deter me.

“It was bad enough that you screwed around on all of your own wives. Did you have to trick me into cheating on mine?”

“I never meant…” His voice was barely audible.

“What, Wilson? You never meant to hurt me? You never meant for it to go this far?”

“I was just trying to protect you,” Wilson stammered.

“Protect me from what? Not your big bigamous dick, apparently.”

“Jesus, House. I was trying to protect you from _yourself_.”

I rolled my eyes. “Give me a fucking break. I’m a big boy, Wilson.”

 _“You were going to kill yourself,”_ Wilson burst out, taking an involuntary step towards me. We stared at each other. For once, I couldn’t speak.

“Cuddy blamed you for the accident. You were self-destructing for months, your relationship was falling apart. She finally kicked you out. I got you shit-faced, the old standby, but it wasn’t enough. You said that you didn’t think you could deal. You asked me to help you...” His wan face twisted with disgust and remorse. “When you’d disappeared the next morning, I panicked. I called your team, Cuddy, everyone. Marco told me you’d been spotted by the pharmacy. I found you in your office and…I gambled that you would drink the coffee, if only to get me out of there as quickly as possible.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of these ravings, and came up with an answer that I didn’t like at all. “You _drugged_ me?”

“I realize that you don’t remember this,” Wilson snarled, “but drugging one another is a perfectly acceptable tactic, with a long and glorious tradition.”

“I asked you to help me. I _trusted_ you.”

“I _did_ help you, House. I just couldn’t do it the way you wanted me to.”

“Helping someone take his own life should be routine for you by now.” Ugly words, but I was so outraged that I couldn’t seem to help myself.

“Ohhh, oho, no you don’t.” Wilson started pacing, gesticulating in indignation. “Those were patients dying in agony, being gnawed hollow by cancer, with no hope of recovery or escape from their pain. You weren’t sick. You weren’t dying. You just _wanted_ to die. Jesus, House, you were still in shock. A month, a week, maybe a day later, and you would have felt differently.”

“You don’t know that. And it was _my choice_.”

“Fine. I robbed you of your autonomy – _once_ – so that you would have the rest of your life to exercise it. You would have done the same with any of your patients. You _have_ done the same, more times than I can count.”

“That’s different.”

“The hell it is,” Wilson said wildly. “It’s all right to save a patient’s life against his wishes, but not the life of the person you love? You’re a fucking hypocrite.” He jabbed his finger practically in my face. “Stacy should have told you that a _long_ time ago.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck _you_. You think that you’re unique? You think you’re never misinformed, that your judgment’s never compromised? Get over yourself, House. Sometimes you’re wrong, just like everybody else, only more so, because you’ll never admit it, and you just keep compounding the mistake.”

“Look who’s talking!”

Wilson opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and gave me a bitter grin. “Touche,” he said. “I never expected you to lose your memories, but once I realized that you had, it only made sense to conceal the most painful parts, at least for a little while. But House, if you could see the difference in yourself…” He took a deep breath. “It had been so long since I’d seen you like this. You said it yourself, you’ve been _happy_. I swear to you… I thought that I was doing the right thing.”

“And I suppose this argument would have worked on the old me. I would have just said, ‘Thank you, Wilson, for saving my life and then maintaining this, this ridiculous fiction so that you could keep me in _your_ bed instead of letting me go back to my wife and grieve with her for our dead daughter!”

Wilson grimaced. “No,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “The old you would have told me to go to hell, and then walked out and never spoken to me again.”

“Sounds about right to me,” I said, and limped for the front door.

This time Wilson didn’t come after me.

 

 

 


	6. Filling in the Blanks

**Chapter 6: Filling in the Blanks**   
_"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."_

 

When I first mounted the bike, my hands shaky on the grips, I didn’t have a clear idea of where I should be headed. There was, in fact, a strong, panicky urge simply to ride straight into oncoming traffic, but it was trumped by a more rational insistence on staying alive, at least long enough to uncover the truth about what had happened. But I wasn’t ready to face Cuddy; this was all too new, too bewildering. Instead, I found myself recalling the route taken by Foreman the night my fellows had accompanied me out to the bar.

I pulled alongside the curb in front of Chase’s apartment building, just behind a blue Prius with Massachusetts plates. The ride had cleared my head and cooled my temper; my walk to his front door was almost steady. I rapped sharply with the handle of my cane, not caring whether he was up, or for that matter, alone. The attractive woman with auburn hair who answered the door was clearly much more surprised to see me than I was to see her.

“Make yourself scarce for a few minutes, I need to talk to Chase,” I told her, shifting restlessly at the ache in my leg.

“I’m fine, and how have you been?” she replied, stretching up to kiss me briskly on the cheek. I just stood there, bemused, as she settled back down on her heels and regarded me wryly from beneath her lashes.

Chase appeared behind her shoulder clad only in a pair of sweatpants, toweling his hair. “Allison, who…” He stopped short at the sight of me and flushed crimson in embarrassment. “House. This, uh. This is not what you think.”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” I said.

Chase sighed. “This is my ex-wife. Allison Cameron. Your former fellow?”

“Funny, that seems to be kind of a theme today,” I answered, and fixed him with a steely glare. “Any more ex-wives around here that I ought to know about?”

“You really don’t remember me?” Allison asked, even as Chase blanched, looking guilty as hell.

“Now that you mention it, you do look kind of familiar,” I admitted. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

She didn’t budge. “I heard that you were with Wilson.”

“ _Were_ being the operative word,” I growled. “The son of a bitch conveniently forgot to mention that I was already married.”

“Funny, I wouldn’t have thought that he’d consider that an obstacle,” Allison quipped.

“Well, he certainly took pains to keep it from me,” I snarled, and turned back to Chase. “And he wasn’t the only one, was he?”

“Allison,” Chase said without taking his eyes off me, “would you give us a minute?”

She folded her arms. “Is it true, Robert? Have you been hiding this from him?”

“You weren’t _here_ ,” Chase breathed, his accent noticeably stronger than usual. “You don’t know what he’s been like lately. Or what he was like… after.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Please. Leave us alone for a bit.”

Allison raised an eyebrow, then reached for her coat. “Fine. I’m going out to get some breakfast.” She patted me on the arm as she passed. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “Wilson may not be perfect, but he loves you. He always has.”

“Yeah, ‘cause nothing says love like secretly sedating someone, or seducing them away from their spouse.”

“Well, you should know,” she said tartly, and disappeared down the stairwell.

Chase backed up nimbly as I pushed my way inside and commenced to pace, preferring the sharp, raw pain that accompanied every jar of my thigh to the dull, constant ache that caused my jaw to clench in sympathy when I stood still. “How long have you known?”

“Wilson called me and Foreman the night that he learned about the amnesia,” he confessed. “He was nearly frantic. He blamed himself for the sedative he’d given you on top of all the alcohol in your system. But Foreman thinks that the primary cause was psychological, and so do I. Your brain was trying to protect you from knowledge that you weren’t able to handle.”

“What a load of shit,” I snarled.

“Is it?” Chase draped his damp towel over a chair and placed his hands on his hips. “You’d been going downhill for _months_ , House. We all saw it. You’d leave early, come in late and hungover when you managed to make it in at all. It was all we could do to cover your ass. The only reason you weren’t fired was because Cuddy was so busy avoiding you that she couldn’t keep track of your hours. We tried to get you to go back to your old psychiatrist, we even took turns trailing you for a while to make sure that you made it home in one piece. And Wilson told us-” he stopped short, biting his lip.

“Yeah?” My voice sounded low and dangerous even to my own ears. “What exactly did Wilson tell you?”

“He called us,” Chase said softly, “the morning that we found you on the floor of your office. He said that he’d spent the night on your couch and woke up to find you gone. He wanted us to stop you from doing anything stupid.” He rolled his eyes. “If I had a dollar for every time- Look, the point is, you scared him. And us. There is no doubt in my mind that if he hadn’t drugged you, you would be dead.”

“Thanks to him,” I gritted, “the man you knew as Gregory House _is_ dead. I just happen to be animating his sorry corpse.”

Chase shook his head. “That’s not true. You’re… different, yes. You’re dragging less baggage around with you. But you’re still here. Wilson saved you.”

“He had _no right.”_

“House…” he took a deep breath. “He really did have good intentions.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, all he’s done is paved the way to hell. I’ve treated my own wife like a stranger for more than a month. Now I’m going to have to tell her everything, so by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll probably be out on my ass. My medical license was in jeopardy anyway because I quit treatment after Wilson kicked me to the curb for Sam. This will be the final fucking straw. Game over.”

“I don’t think it has to be,” Chase said earnestly. I wanted to punch him in the face. I settled instead for turning petulantly towards the wall.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said and sank down on the chair. “Did you miss the part about how Cuddy blamed you for Rachel’s death and told you to move out? The part where you were like a whipped cur with your tail between your legs and drinking yourself half to death?” My ears pricked up at the tremor in his voice despite myself; he suddenly sounded as if he were only about sixteen years old.

“Chase,” I said tiredly, turning to face him again. “Are you _crying_?”

 _“No,”_ he snuffled, scrubbing a hand angrily across his eyes.

I sighed. “Fan _tas_ tic. Gotta go. Glad we had this little chat.”

“Hold on,” Chase said, straightening up. “There’s still something you need to know about Cuddy.”

“She assures me,” I said, “that they’re both real.”

“Seriously. You need to know what your relationship was like.”

“I didn’t think you’d exactly held back on that subject.”

“I don’t just mean after the accident. I’m talking about what she did to you before that.”

“What, now are you going to tell me that I was a battered husband?” I sneered.

“That’s not so far off, actually,” he said, green eyes grave. “Not physical abuse, of course. But it was clear that she had you totally under her thumb. You never really got your relationship sorted when you went from being her employee to her boyfriend. She expected you to woo her at work and obey her at home.”

“Frankly, from what I’ve heard, you had your head too far up your ass – and a lot of other people’s – to know anything about what my relationship was like.”

He smirked. “Oh, I kept my head down, all right. But it was ambivalence, not indifference. I could see the storm coming; just didn’t think you’d thank me for warning you about it.”

“You got one thing right. This is none of your damned business and never was.”

Chase stood deliberately; in another man, it might have looked like insolence. “You’re angry in large part because you feel like you’ve been robbed of your happily ever after,” he said. “But it was a fairytale from the start. It never would have worked out.”

“Takes one to know one, huh?” I jeered.

He remained unruffled. “What you have with Wilson is a second chance. Don’t piss it away just because-“

“Because what? Because my supposed best friend drugged me, tricked me into adultery, and has been lying to me ever since?”

To my astonishment, mild-mannered Chase suddenly strode forward, his hands clenched at his sides as if itching to take a swing at me. “You ungrateful bastard. Do you have any idea what that man has done for you? How much he’s sacrificed for you over the years?”

I took a bewildered step back, momentarily unable to speak, but Chase followed so that our faces ended up even closer together. “Has anyone told you about Vogler? No? Got himself on the Board of Trustees by giving a big donation to the hospital, tried to have you tossed out on your arse?”

“What for?”

“You rubbed him the wrong way. I know, boggles the imagination, right? But he needed a unanimous vote from the Board, and Wilson was the only one willing to stand up for you.”

“So he saved my job?”

“Lost his, actually,” Chase answered, unblinking. “When they voted him off the Board, he resigned. Went so far as to clean out his desk before Cuddy came to her senses and convinced the rest of them that liberty had been sold for too low a price.”

I stared at him. “I was really that unpopular? They must have had their reasons.”

“Yes, you were. And they had their reasons. I even gave them a few extra to try to save myself when I was sure you were going down.” He looked down then, eased off, shifted from one bare foot to the other. “I’m not proud of it. And I certainly paid. For years.”

My hand was cramping around my cane; I switched it to the other side and flexed my fingers, shaking my head. “You mean I made you pay.” He didn’t deny it. “Why didn’t you leave?”

“Because-“ Chase took a deep breath, met my eyes again. “Because I admired you more than anyone. Because I was learning to be a better doctor. Because I thought that one day you might discover that you were proud of how far I’d come.”

It occurred to me that we had wandered somewhat off topic, but this struck me as almost as important. “And did I?”

The corner of his lip twitched. “Yeah. That was the day you fired me.”

I groaned in disbelief. Looking concerned, Chase pulled up a chair for me, but I waved him away. “It’s not the leg, it’s just…” I heaved a sigh of frustration. “I feel like every time I peel off a new layer of my former self, I find…”

“Another reason to cry?” Chase suggested wryly.

“Something like that.” I was quiet for a minute. “Did I really punch you in the face for arguing with a diagnosis?”

“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t quite like that. You were a mess, you were going through withdrawal. I tried to keep you from leaving the hospital, and you… reacted badly.”

“And what, you just turned the other cheek?”

“Not exactly,” Chase said. “As a matter of fact, I was _this_ close to turning you in. I still think that’s why Wilson finally caved.” He caught my puzzled expression and reddened. “Wait… you don’t know about that?”

“Let’s hear it,” I told him, even though I knew that he was only about to give me more reasons to despise myself.

“Um. Remember when we told you that you forged Wilson’s signature and stole a dead patient’s drugs?” I dipped my chin. “Well, you were caught. You’d pissed off a police detective named Tritter when he was a patient in the clinic, and he decided that you were a menace to society and had to be put away. So he started sniffing around, then put pressure on the rest of us to give him the evidence he needed. He was hardest on Wilson – blocked his accounts, confiscated his car, even had his DEA license suspended. But Wilson wouldn’t give you up. Not until he thought that I was about to ruin my own relationship with you.”

“Well, it’s not like he wasn’t making his own life much simpler at the same time,” I sneered.

Chase just looked at me. “That’s what Cameron thought, too. Believe what you want. He didn’t go to Tritter for his own benefit. He brokered a deal to save your arse, and you were too stubborn to take it. Then you almost OD’d on that stolen Oxy. Bloody near broke his heart.”

My thigh was throbbing, an enormous, ugly mass of agony that made my teeth ache, and my thoughts were even more twisted and painful. Abruptly I swung around and headed for the exit. “So, what, now you’re telling me he’s _Saint_ Wilson?” I snarked. “I see what you’ve been trying to do here. It won’t make any difference.”

“I hope you’re wrong about that,” Chase said softly to my back just before I slammed the door in his face.

***

For the first time since my new life had begun, I deeply resented the old injury to my leg. I was almost dizzy with the need to escape from my own skin, and I wanted nothing more than to run as fast and as far as I could, to sweat out the bitterness of betrayal, to lose myself in the uncompromising rhythm of arms swinging, legs scissoring, feet pounding the pavement. But as it was, a moan of pain threatened to burst from my throat with every step, and it was all I could do to lurch the few yards to the curb and haul my right leg back over the bike.

Since I couldn’t tear up the Princeton streets, I tore up my old apartment instead.

I began with the bathroom, mainly because I was quivering and nauseated from the agony in my thigh, and I figured that ibuprofen while sorely inadequate, would be better than nothing. But once I’d gulped down a few pills, I ransacked the room, combing through every crevice, even tearing the toilet tank apart. On a hunch, I yanked the medicine cabinet away from the wall and found a hole in the tile, just the right size for a prescription vial. Its emptiness mocked me.

Next the bedroom, unused since that last night of my old life, the stripped mattress looking abandoned and forlorn, the dresser drawers gaping, bare. Over time, I’d moved most of my clothes to the loft, but I’d left a lot of my books and curios, secure in the knowledge that I could return for them whenever I wanted. Now I opened every volume and flipped through the pages, then flung it to the floor. Spines cracked, leaves folded and tore, as the discarded pile rose round my feet. But there was nothing of value to me here.

I lay down on my belly and fumbled around under the bed, finding an old, oiled wooden box. My gut twisted in hope and fear as I unlatched it, but the contents were a mystery to me, an assortment of unlabeled vials and small tools that smelled faintly of cedar. I shoved that aside and went on, driven by frustration now as much as anything, emptying out the nightstand, desecrating the desk. And I found plenty, my homeowners’ insurance policy, my tax returns – married but filing separately – but not anything I sought.

I worked coldly, silent and methodical, now that my initial flare of rage had been banked to sullen embers. I groped the guts of the baby grand, shook out every shoe, left no couch cushion unturned. I didn’t allow myself to think about the perfidy of my team, the ruins of my marriage, the tragic death of a three-year-old on my own hands. Most of all, I didn’t allow myself to think of Wilson, sweet-faced Wilson with his gentle hands and lying eyes.

When the dust cleared towards the middle of the afternoon, I stood in the center of the main room, my clothes smudged and wrinkled, my fingertips filthy and raw. I had unearthed a few bottles of liquor for my efforts, gleaming amber on the re-righted coffee table, and a roll of breath mints. And that was all.

I knew that I could always expand my search – show up at an ER with a plausible excuse, or even just take advantage of the less-than-stellar security at PPTH. But I felt old, and sore, and soul-weary, and what I had would work for now. I briefly considered getting a glass, but I was alone, and beyond civility, and besides, towards the end of this I would be in no shape to pour the contents of one vessel into another.

I’d found a squat, half-full bottle of Maker’s Mark, but there was no point in wasting the good stuff on this exercise when Dewars would do the job just as well. I raised the bottle in a silent toast to amnesiac adulterers everywhere and took a generous swig, closing my eyes as the Scotch burned its way slowly down my throat.

Getting shit-faced took no time at all on an empty stomach. I tossed the first empty bottle at the television and snorted when it went wildly off course. I snagged its successor, after a couple of attempts, before I stumbled back to the bathroom, trying to take a swig but only succeeding in unbalancing myself. Sprawled on the floor of the hallway, the bottle luckily still intact in my hand, I let my heavy head loll back and laughed drunkenly until the tears ran down my face. Fucking leg, fucking Stacy, fucking Wilson, fucking Gregory House…

***

The sky was already light when I became dimly aware of the phone ringing in the living room. I squinched my eyes shut and counted to five before passing out again.

The banging on the front door was harder to ignore.

 _“HOUSE!”_

“Go ‘way,” I mumbled dry-mouthed into the mattress, trying to twist away from the violence inside my skull. I felt fully as shitty as I had that first morning waking up in my office, although this time I knew exactly who and where I was. At least that was something.

The banging resumed, more loudly than before if such a thing was possible. “I know you’re home, I saw the bike.”

I groaned and pulled my arm over my head, wishing that I could have woken up dead. I’m not sure exactly how much time passed before Foreman’s voice said, “House?” from about six inches away from my ear, and I nearly wet the bed.

 _“Jesus,”_ I swore, shifting my elbow just enough to squint up at him. “How the hell did you get in here?”

“You originally hired me for my B&E skills,” he said blandly. “Get up, we have a new patient. And I’ve brought you something.”

“I hope it’s a pistol to put me out of my misery,” I snarled, then felt immediately guilty as Foreman’s eyes narrowed.

“Not funny,” he said shortly. “Although, in fact, that’s exactly why Wilson gave this to me for safe-keeping in the first place. Here.” Without further ceremony, he shoved a box at me of about the right size and shape to contain a dress shirt. I dragged myself up into a sitting position, tears springing to my eyes as my scarred thigh screamed in pain. Foreman noticed at once and put the box down on the bed beside me. “Hang on, I’ll get you some water and ibuprofen,” he said, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Despite the hangover from hell, I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I slit open the taped sides of the box with my thumbnail and lifted the lid. Inside were some official-looking pieces of paper, a few photos, and a simple white gold wedding band. Here was the hard evidence I’d been missing, which proved that I was husband to one Lisa Cuddy and adoptive father to one Rachel Cuddy, now deceased. Looking at the documents and images, the inert circle of metal, I still felt no rush of recognition, no upwelling of love or loss. My only response was a cold rage.

Foreman found me staring at one of the photos, presumably from my wedding day, when he returned with my water and a couple of pills. “I took that one,” he said conversationally as I accepted his offerings and downed them with a grimace. I wiped my lips and looked more closely. Cuddy was in a white dress cut to flatter her décolletage; she was smiling, her head tilted towards me, her hand resting possessively on my arm. On my other side, Wilson all but mirrored her pose, his mouth stretched in a simulated enthusiasm that failed to summon the laugh-lines around his eyes. And I, in the middle, had the oddest expression on my face, a kind of mingled relief and confusion that suggested that I didn’t know quite how I had gotten there but was willing to trust that all of my troubles were over.

I tossed the photo back into the box with the rest of my marital detritus and glared at Foreman. “Why’d Wilson give this stuff to you? Chase and Taub too busy making their own wives disappear?”

“He figured I was the only one you wouldn’t be able to bully into spilling the beans,” Foreman shrugged. “But now that you know, I thought that you might want to have these back.”

“I just can’t imagine how he thought – how _any_ of you thought that he could get away with this.”

“Yeah, well,” Foreman said, giving me a significant look, “when you love someone, you do stupid things.”

“Sorry, _Eric_ , I’m already taken.”

“No, you’re not. At least, not by Lisa Cuddy. That’s what Chase was trying to tell you. But he obviously failed to make himself clear, so here I am.”

“Not for long,” I said. “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

“House, you’re making a big mistake here. Look, I’ll admit that when you and Cuddy first got together, I was really relieved. You’d obviously been depressed since Wilson’s ex-wife moved in, and I figured that the happier you were with your love life, the less crap we’d all have to take from you.”

“Careful,” I sneered, “your concern for my well-being might make me cry.”

“But I was wrong.” Foreman shook his head emphatically. “You were the last man I ever thought I’d see pussy-whipped. But once you started dating Cuddy, you twisted yourself into knots to earn her approval, even at the expense of our patients. That _never_ would have happened in the old days. And when you couldn’t accommodate her, you lied to keep the peace. She could never be happy with you the way you were, and yet you were too terrified of losing her to face up to facts.”

“Wilson didn’t mention any of this,” I said stubbornly.

“Why would he? Wilson was always your biggest cheerleader,” Foreman replied, then raised his eyebrows. “Guess we all know why now, huh?”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“ _I_ was there. _I remember_ ,” he said with deliberate insolence.

“Nice.” I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Foreman was still standing there. _“What?”_

“I told you, we have a patient. Now get out of bed, drag your ass to the shower, and at least try to attain your usual low level of respectability.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m leaving in fifteen minutes, and you’ll be in my car, whatever your condition.”

“Who the fuck made you the boss of me?” I growled, even as I found myself grudgingly dragging myself upright to swing my legs onto the floor.

“Cuddy did. More than once.” Foreman clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll be outside.”

 


	7. Letting Go

**Chapter 7: Letting Go**   
_  
“You know my methods, Watson. Apply them!”   
_

 

In the car, Foreman asked how long it had been since I’d eaten.

“Who are you, my mother?” I retorted, and then had to lean back and close my eyes because even sneering hurt. “Shut up and drive.”

After that, Foreman seemed content to let me concentrate on not upchucking all over his spotless upholstery, but once he pulled into his parking space, he turned to me with purpose.

“Being with Wilson might be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“Really? Too bad I wouldn’t know.”

“At least consider giving him another chance.”

“Ironically,” I said, “I seem to be the only one around here who remembers my obligations to my _actual_ partner.”

His face looked even stonier than usual. “House. You’re not going to tell Cuddy.”

I didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“Please,” he said, “don’t do anything you’re gonna regret.”

“Oh, _now_ you tell me.”

“Your marriage was over. Both of you barely managed to climb out of the wreckage. What can you hope to gain by talking to her?”

I gave him a sharp look. “The truth.”

He cocked his head and stared at me, unblinking, for a long moment, then nodded and got out of the car. We walked in silence to the elevator together, my head and thigh throbbing with every step. Once inside the main entrance, Foreman stopped and jerked his chin towards Dean Cuddy’s office.

“Go ahead and do what you gotta do, House. Good luck.”

“I thought you said we had a patient,” I said accusingly; he only shrugged.

“I lied.”

***

“We need to talk.”

Cuddy looked up from her paperwork, then deliberately put down the pen, uncrossed her legs, and stood stiffly to come out from behind the desk. She sank down on the edge of the sofa and patted the place beside her, wordlessly offering me a seat.

“No, thanks, I’ll stand.” I was too agitated, and only movement dulled the raging ache in my thigh. “There’s something I have to tell you.” I paused, closed my eyes briefly. This, in all likelihood, was the end of the charade. She’d have my hide. She might get my medical license revoked. The divorce settlement would be spectacular.

“I’ve been wondering how long it was going to take you to come talk to me.” She said it flatly, almost matter-of-factly, although she couldn’t completely conceal the tremor in her hands.

“I’m sorry. I know that this is going to sound crazy, but I didn’t know that I-“ I stopped and blew out my breath in frustration. “We’re still married, and I… I’ve been forgetting my responsibilities to you.”

“No kidding.”

“Cuddy,” I said, and stood before her, shame-faced but steadily. “Any rumors that you may have heard about me and James Wilson…” She just looked up at me, as if politely waiting for me to continue a commentary on the weather. “They’re true. I’ve been… having an affair with him. But I, I realized some things just recently, and I’m here to say that I’m sorry, and it’s over. I married _you_ , and I want to be here for you.”

Her gaze dropped to her lap, and her shoulders started shaking. I felt like a complete cad. Leaning my cane against the coffee table, I hastened to sit down beside her and reached tentatively to wrap an arm around her small, sturdy frame. That was when I realized that she was laughing – at first, a hard, mirthless, almost bitter laugh, but gradually it smoothed out and softened into something generous and real. She leaned her head against me, tucking herself under my chin, until her chuckles finally died down. “House,” she said finally, “I know.”

“You… what? How-”

“ _How_ is not important. I know about the amnesia. I know that’s why you stopped staking out my house and office like the obsessive-compulsive lunatic that you are. I know that you didn’t realize we were married when you started sleeping with Wilson. I’m not angry with you. In fact, I’m… kind of relieved.”

This was making no sense. “You found out that we’ve been keeping this a secret for weeks, possibly putting the entire hospital at risk for legal action and you’re… relieved?”

“I didn’t say that I wasn’t angry with _Wilson_ ,” she replied with some asperity.

“Well, that makes two of us,” I muttered.

“I was the one who asked _you_ to leave. Having some time apart has been… helpful. I’ve been doing some thinking, seeing a new therapist. And I’ve realized some things about myself. Things about us.

“It’s no good, House. I love you, but… we don’t fit. I don’t really _like_ the person I am with you, and I’m pretty sure that you could say the same. No, don’t interrupt, I’m certain about this. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with either of us; we just need different things.”

“Cuddy-“

“You need freedom. I need power. I am always going to try to control you, to change you to be the man I want you to be. And you are always going to resist. The challenge is what made it so exciting. And that’s fine for a flirtation, but for a lifelong commitment? It doesn’t make sense. House… I want a divorce.”

“Cuddy,” I said, my voice low with urgency. “The accident… Rachel’s death must have been such a shock. You shouldn’t make any rash decisions.”

“Not like you, you mean?” she asked archly, raising an eyebrow. My face must have fallen, because she reached out and clasped my hand, spoke more softly. “Wilson told me yesterday that you… were going to hurt yourself. And I was too wrapped up in my own grief to notice.” She squeezed my fingers, and I could see just how shaken she had been by this news. “I’m just grateful that Wilson was there to pick up the pieces.”

I looked away. The thought of Wilson’s deceptions still nearly choked me with rage. “Cuddy, I can’t-“

“He was _there_ for you,” she cut me off. “He still is. And that’s so important. It’s the only thing that can make this easier.” She held my gaze for a few seconds with a serenity bordering on stubbornness. “I’m going away.”

“Away?” I repeated stupidly.

“Yes. I’m taking a leave of absence. I’ve had this job for almost fourteen years and have never been away on sabbatical, can you believe it?” She laughed shortly. “For the last seven I stuck around because I was worried that no one else could keep _you_ under control. No, it’s all right, don’t you dare apologize. I have issues. My _issues_ have issues. You’re not the only one who needs to find yourself. I was always so ambitious, always rushing to make the next milestone. Now I’m forty-three and, and _stuck_ , and I need to take some time to figure some things out.”

“You’re sure about this.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Yes. I found a year-round retreat house. Meditation, yoga, no distractions. Time to mourn. Time to heal.” Her voice caught, and she paused and cleared her throat before continuing. “It’s too late to interview for a permanent replacement this year. I’ll have to get the Board to approve an interim dean.” Cuddy leaned closer, confiding. “You do realize that you’re practically unemployable.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve thought of someone, a very popular current department head who knows you well, appreciates your abilities, and can manipulate you almost as skillfully as you manipulate everybody else.”

I stared at her as horrifying realization dawned. “You don’t mean-“

“Go kiss and make up, House,” she smirked, patting me patronizingly on the arm.

“I don’t think-“

“House. _Sit._ Let me tell you a story.”

“I’ve already heard the one about the atheist, the Jew, and the salami.”

“Very funny. _This_ story is about a medical conference attended by two doctors who were longtime friends. One of these doctors was scheduled to deliver a talk in which he planned to reveal that he had assisted in the deaths of several of his terminal patients. His friend found out about this, _sedated_ him, stole his pants, and delivered the speech in his stead, thus saving him from professional suicide.”

“Sounds just like the kind of thing Wilson would do.”

“Wilson didn’t do it, House,” she told me triumphantly. “ _You_ did. Without his consent, and very much against his wishes.”

“That’s a very touching story,” I said, doing my best to sound bored, although my thoughts were racing a mile a minute.

“Here’s another one. One day I get a complaint from a patient because the doctor who came in to examine her breast was obviously agitated, winked at her, took his own vital signs in front of her, and then marched out declaring that he was going to kill someone. Do you know why?”

I rolled my eyes. “I suspect I will in a few seconds.”

“Because _you_ had given him methamphetamines! Because rather than just having a conversation like normal people about how he’d been doing since his third divorce, you doped his coffee so you could prove that he was taking antidepressants!”

We stared at each other, Cuddy looking more invigorated than I could recall seeing her, with eyes bright and face faintly flushed. The image flashed unbidden through my head of Wilson, so concerned at all times with maintaining his conservative, caring persona, clumsily groping a patient’s breast and winking at her, then practically tripping over himself in apology. I felt my lip start to twitch, and despite my best efforts, the twitch turned into a snort. Cuddy must have had the same thought, because her mouth stretched into a wide, dazzling grin. And then we were both laughing, helplessly, conspiratorially, and I knew that this was the beginning of the end.

“Well played,” I said when I finally got my breath back.

Cuddy cleared her throat. “You also once sedated my mother at dinner.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.” She tried to frown at me and failed. “I think you were worried that she was going to ask you to do the honorable thing.”

“And?”

“Obviously the sedative kicked in too late.”

I couldn’t return her reminiscing smile. “Cuddy. We were _married_. Technically, we still are.”

“Yes,” she said steadily. “But I told you. I need to put that behind us.”

“Cuddy, I’m sorry to ask you this, but nobody else can tell me…” I took a deep breath. “Why did you blame me? Was I responsible for Rachel’s death?”

She bit her lip, but immediately placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “House, no. I needed somebody to blame. It wasn’t your fault.”

“What happened that day?” I could hardly look at her, but I pressed on doggedly. “I need to know.”

She sighed and sat back, pushing glossy dark hair out of her face. “It was an icy day. I was driving, Rachel was fussing in her car seat behind me. She had managed to unbuckle her safety straps, and I was turning my head to scold her when…” Cuddy paused and swallowed. “The other car must have slid when the driver tried to stop at the intersection. It slammed right into the driver’s side and threw Rachel out of her seat. Shattered the windows. Broke my arm.” She shook her head, staring straight ahead. “I never even saw it coming.”

“Cuddy… I’m so sorry. But then why…”

“I told you, it was never your fault. The only thing you’d done wrong was to walk away without a scratch. But I said that Rachel would never have… died, if she had stayed in her car seat. That she was fooling around, and distracting me, because you weren’t strict enough with her.”

“Not like my father,” I said, understanding.

Cuddy nodded and squeezed my arm. “Not like your father. You were so terrified of turning out like him that you could hardly scold her, even when she was genuinely being a brat.” She smiled slightly even as her blue eyes brimmed with tears.

“So, still, in a way…”

“House, _no_.” She shook her head vehemently, then sniffled and swiped a tissue to dab at her eyes. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t anybody’s fault, but it definitely wasn’t yours.” She looked up at me, and it was clear just how much effort this absolution was costing her. “I’m truly sorry that I blamed you. I’m sorry that I let you feel responsible.”

I took her hand and raised it wordlessly to my lips. She patted my knee, then gave me a little push. “We can talk about this again later if you want. Right now, I think that there are other apologies in order.”

Recognizing this as a dismissal, I stood. I was halfway to the door when she added, "Send Wilson down here when you're done with him, would you?"

"Yeah," I said. And then, "Interim dean, huh?"

"No good deed goes unpunished," Cuddy smirked.

***

I should not have been surprised to run into Masters right outside of Cuddy’s office. She stepped in front of me, blocking my path, so that I almost tripped over my cane trying to avoid her. Arms folded defensively over her chest, she lifted her chin and preempted anything I might have had to say by blurting, “I _had_ to tell her. She had the right to know, to protect our patients. And to understand why you’ve been acting so oddly. And you won’t need to fight with her to fire me this time. I resign.”

Cocking my head at her, I gestured with the cane for her to have a seat. She shook her head and remained standing, shaking a little but obviously unrepentant and resolved.

“Who told you?”

“No one,” she shrugged. “I’ve always had a brain. I learned how to use my eyes from you.”

“Is that right.” I considered her for a moment, so terribly young and clever and arrogantly transparent. "Guess you think you're a real hero.”

She stared back stonily. "I didn't say that."

“Didn't have to.”

"Dr. House," she said, squaring her shoulders, "do you accept my resignation or not?"

"Where would be the fun in that?"

“You’re determined to fire me, then,” she stated rather than asked.

“Nope."

"Fine - what?"

"Emineminem, of all the members of my team, you are the smallest idiot, and I'm not just referring to your cup size. But you still have a lot to learn. Want you to stick around until you see the error of your honest ways. Until you can look your boss right in the eye and lie like the best of us.” I started walking away, more eager than ever to get up to the fourth floor.

“But you’re my boss,” she said to my back.

“Finally figured that out, have you?”

***

The door of Wilson’s office was closed, but the soft shuffling sound of papers being filed betrayed its conscientious occupant. I raised my hand to knock, then muttered, “Fuck it,” and simply pushed the door open.

On the other side of the desk, Wilson froze. He was obviously in the middle of packing up his office: his framed posters had been removed, a half-empty box sat on his desk, and several closed, neatly labeled ones were stacked against the wall. He looked terrible, too, pasty-faced and hollow-eyed.

We both spoke simultaneously, _“What are you-“_ then stopped in confusion.

I recovered first. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you’re going somewhere.”

Wilson stared at me with a mixture of remorse and resignation. “Why do I feel like we’ve had this conversation before?”

“No fucking clue,” I shrugged. “But I’m willing to bet that you were just as wrong the first time.”

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s been at least _two_ times, actually, and how could I possibly stay here now that-“

“You’re an idiot,” I said gruffly. He wouldn’t look at me. “Wilson. Please tell me that you’re not going to stop fighting now. That after all this, you’re not just going to let me go.” When Wilson still didn’t reply, I stepped up to him, into him, clasped his unshaven jaw with both hands, and kissed him urgently on the mouth.

He hesitated for just a second – a second that felt like an eternity – before responding sweetly, eagerly, and my knees went weak with relief.

When I released him, he squeezed past me and shut the door, then turned back, his gaze hopeful but wary. “House, I can’t believe you actually came back. Those things I said to you-“

“No,” I said quickly. “You were right. Someone should have said them to me a long time ago.”

Wilson rubbed his face. “Stacy tried. You never forgave her. And I thought that if I told you what I’d done, you’d cut me out of your life. Worse than that, you’d cut yourself out. Without my help.”

“I know.” I didn’t say that I was sorry, much less _thank you_ , but we both knew that the thoughts were there, simmering just below the surface.

“But you didn’t. You’re here.” Wilson still looked incredulous, as though he expected me to dissolve into mist and drift away at any moment. “What’s different this time?”

“Me,” I said simply. And then, reaching for his hand and tugging him to me once more, “I can’t change the past. But I can choose now. I can choose this.”

Folding my arms awkwardly around Wilson’s taut, trembling frame, I rested my forehead against his and stood there for a long moment, quietly, pretending not to notice when his breathing roughened, ignoring also the sudden blurring of my sight. When he finally slumped against me, I tucked my chin over his clavicle and pulled him close. I could smell him, unwashed and damp with anxious sweat, and so achingly familiar that I hardened against him without warning.

It had abruptly become obvious that there were far too many layers of fabric between us. I released Wilson and started peeling him, still dazed but unresisting, out of his suit coat. He shuddered as I leaned forward to lick the soft skin just below his ear and began unbuttoning his un-ironed shirt. “House… not that I’m not… _ahhh_ … thrilled, by your change of heart, but do you really think we should be doing this… _at work?_ ” he gasped.

“The jig’s up, Jimmy. I just talked to Cuddy.”

Wilson’s eyebrows shot up as he jerked back away from me to peer into my face. _“And?”_

I gave him a slow, wicked grin. “Let’s just say that I still have a job here, and she has no problem with you filling her shoes.” That was all he needed to know for now. It was Cuddy’s place to persuade him to take on the interim dean position, and I had far better things to do with my mouth at the moment.

Wilson apparently agreed, because he made no further protest when I sank into the chair in front of his desk and guided him nearer, nudging his legs apart. Straddling my thighs, Wilson rested warm hands on my shoulders and closed his eyes as I unbuckled his belt and unzipped him, then rubbed my stubbled jaw teasingly against the conspicuous bulge in his boxers. I ran my hands appreciatively up his flanks and back around to more yielding flesh, feeling my own cock twitch as he sucked in a startled breath.

Just then a sharp knock rattled the door, followed by Foreman’s voice. “Dr. Wilson? Have you seen House?” Already unbalanced, Wilson jumped and half-fell against me, reaching frantically for the flaps of his fly as the chair legs scraped loudly against the floor.

 _“Kinda busy,”_ I sang out, holding Wilson firmly in place with a warning look.

There was a pause. “It’s not urgent,” Taub declared; I could picture his lips twitching in amusement. “We’ll come back later.”

“Do you think they’re-“ That was Chase, sounding simultaneously titillated and indignant. _“Here?”_

Foreman’s voice trailed off as they presumably moved away from the door, but I could still hear him clearly, “Oh, yeah, _you’re_ a fine one to talk…”

I turned my attention back to little Jimmy. “Now, where were we?”

***

The soon-to-be-former-Dean of Medicine made her official announcement two weeks later in the main auditorium in front of flashing bulbs; most of our major donors and nearly all of the hospital staff had turned up to send her off. Cuddy was wearing an elegant sky-blue suit that emphasized the clarity of her eyes. She made a smiling speech before bringing Wilson up on stage to join her, clasping his hand, and giving him a little kiss on the cheek. I assume that it was mainly complimentary; my brain was buzzing so much that I couldn’t hear a word.

Afterwards Cuddy was completely hemmed in by well-wishers, but Wilson managed to escape for a moment so that he could come over to join me and my fellows. They each congratulated him with an enthusiastic handshake or a half-hug. I harrumphed and poked him in the chest with my cane, keeping him at arm’s length. “I’m undone. I’m actually going to be supervised by someone who managed to subvert my entire team for _weeks_ without my knowledge.”

“ _Almost_ the entire team,” Taub added _sotto voce_ , rocking back on his heels with a significant look at Masters.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wilson said warmly, “there’s no reason for you to have any doubts about where their loyalties lie.”

I looked around at their young faces, all lit up with gratitude and affection, and felt my throat tighten. “Go on,” I told Wilson gruffly. “Get your kumba ya-yas out. We’ll celebrate _properly_ when you get home.” He blushed a little, still not completely comfortable with the idea of being out in the open, but smiled and nodded and clapped Chase on the shoulder before walking back over to Cuddy.

“Wow,” Foreman shook his head, once Wilson was safely out of earshot, “I still can’t believe you had the foresight to start sleeping with your new boss so far in advance.”

“Yeah, well, it’s only an interim position.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively at Chase. “Here’s hoping that _you_ get picked to replace him and not Taub.”

“Hey, what about me?” Foreman demanded with mock indignation.

“Sorry, a reliable source informs me that you already had your chance.”

Taub suddenly rose to his tiptoes, craning his neck in a futile attempt to see over the crowd. “Did I just see Cameron?”

Chase jumped a little. “She came?” he asked, looking decidedly twitchy. In just a few seconds his ex-wife had appeared from between two tall orderlies and slipped her arm through his.

“Surprise,” she said to him. “I know we’ve had our differences, but she’s kept this place going for so many years, and this is a huge step for her. I decided that I had to show up to see her off.”

I belatedly realized that the “differences” referred to Cuddy, not Chase, and my fellow confirmed this insight with his next words.

“Um, we weren’t going to say anything just yet, but I suppose this is as good a time as any.” He looked around at Taub and Foreman, who were staring at him with unconcealed curiosity, and took a deep breath. “I’m finally leaving Princeton Plainsboro. I’ll be moving to Boston at the end of the month.”

Everyone’s jaw dropped a little bit as Allison added, “I’ve been hired at MGH to start up a new Department of Diagnostic Medicine, and Chase is going to work with me for a while, at least until we can find something more permanent for him.” She smiled radiantly at each of us in turn.

Foreman was the first to find his voice. “Congratulations,” he said, apparently sincerely.

“Thanks,” Allison answered, and winked. “Keep in touch, we might be looking next year.”

“I don’t know quite how to say this,” Taub abruptly addressed her, “but are you _sure?_ A year ago, it seemed like you never wanted to see him again.”

She tilted her head, considering. “I don’t think anyone can ever be one hundred percent sure,” she said at last. “I’ve been in therapy-“ her gaze flicked over to meet mine “-long overdue, I might add, and I expect that I’ll still be working some things out for a while. But I absolutely know how lucky I am that Robert is willing to give this another chance.”

Chase smiled down at her, and the love and vulnerability was so naked on his face that I had to look away, my throat tight. I wanted to warn him off, grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he saw sense. But a man who’s cast his lot with an acknowledged adulterer and three times divorcee who just came out of the closet doesn’t really have much of a leg to stand on. So instead, I only nodded briefly and said to Allison, “Don’t screw this up.”

Instead of reacting with anger, she answered, “Actually, I should thank you.”

“The hell for?”

She flushed then, and looked around apologetically. “Give us a minute?” she said to no one in particular, and my entire team was suddenly out of earshot.

“That was a nifty trick,” I observed.

Allison stepped forward and stretched up to murmur in my ear. “Our circumstances weren’t so different, were they? I never would have expected to learn this lesson from you.”

And I knew that she was referring to forgiveness, and to letting go of lost causes, and my eyes went unerringly to Wilson at the other end of the room. Allison smiled, missing nothing. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m happy for you. And I never thought I’d admit this, but it makes things easier for me, too.”

Without taking my eyes from Wilson’s face, I muttered, “I meant what I said before. If you hurt him-“

“House,” she interrupted, “I’m going to hurt him. And… he’s going to hurt me. But what I’ve realized is that it’s okay. What we have will be strong enough to survive it.”

Then Wilson’s eyes finally moved to meet mine, and something deep inside me turned over as a smile spread over his face. Reaching up to scratch his ear, he subtly beckoned to me. “Gotta go,” I said.

Allison brushed her lips briefly to my cheek and released me.

Wilson was speaking to a recently elected member of the Board along with his own temporary replacement in charge of Oncology. “Doug,” he said, holding an arm out to include me in their circle, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet. This is our head of Diagnostic Medicine, Dr. Gregory House.”

I inclined my head and shook the man’s hand briefly as Wilson went on, “Dr. House enjoys an international reputation for his expertise. And I’m even prouder to say that he’s also my partner.” Wilson’s voice barely quavered, but I could see the effort that it cost him to put this out there.

The board member didn’t bat an eyelash. “Nice to meet you, Greg. Mark and I would love to have you over for dinner sometime.”

“Oh, gee, thanks, _Doug_ ,” I answered sweetly. “Maybe in a few months.” I reached back and grabbed Wilson’s ass, winking broadly. “We’re still in the honeymoon phase.”

Doug chuckled. “Can’t say I blame you. Well, you just say the word.” He nodded to Wilson and Chernin, then walked away to join the cluster of people around Cuddy.

Wilson was rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m starting to see why Cuddy was so pleased to name me as her replacement.”

“It’s obviously your own fault,” I said, “for wearing such tight pants.”

“I’m not-“ Wilson began, and then shook his head and broke into a smile.

“At least I didn’t compliment you on your cleavage,” I said, squeezing his ass one last time for good measure. “I’ll see you at home.”

“See you at home,” Wilson echoed, and the expression in his eyes promised that my best memories were yet to come.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say a huge _thank you_ once again to my beta reader, [](http://jezziejay.livejournal.com/profile)[**jezziejay**](http://jezziejay.livejournal.com/) . Seriously, I almost consider her to be a co-author – that’s how integral she was to the plotting and writing of this piece. She was right there with me from conception to delivery, and without her help, this would be a very different, and far less satisfying, story.


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